


No Swimming

by LockerMice



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: (Almost), AU, Alternate Universe - Fae, Am I doing this right?, Anya & Clarke Griffin Friendship, Anya has a cat, Arkadia, BAMF Anya (The 100), Confused Lexa, Confused!Lexa, Elemental Magic, Everyone Is Gay, Fluff, How do I tag?, I Tried, I'm Bad At Tagging, Is this how?, Light Angst, Magic, Minor Octavia Blake/Lincoln, Multi, Ocean, Past Child Abuse, Past Finn Collins/Clarke Griffin, Past Finn Collins/Raven Reyes, Raven sucks at grocery shopping, Sea Monsters, also a puppy, dragon - Freeform, grumpy!Raven, lots of fire, there's now a pumpkin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-10-03 09:24:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10241525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LockerMice/pseuds/LockerMice
Summary: Arkadia is a sleepy town, things are as they are, and no one questions them. There have been three disturbances in the last century. One was a girl who drowned on the beach. The second was a scrawny child called Raven Reyes who appeared one day. The third appears to have arrived in the form of a 6'2 blonde woman with cheekbones that could have been used to carve out the coastline. Raven Reyes, the Second Disturbance can not for the life of her understand who the hell this woman is, nor why she can't seem to read the signs on the beach. It's a picture for Pete's sake. A picture of a dude swimming, with a big red line through it. It's pretty much universal.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There are entirely too few Ranya fics out there. +1 to that teeny number. 
> 
> On a side note, suggestions are always, ALWAYS welcome.

Raven lifted her hand to block the sun as she squinted over the rocks. A tall, lean figure stood at the very edge of the line of soggy boulders, one strong wave could probably wash them off. She limped faster across the sand, then carefully picked her way around patched of algae and deep pools.

The person was indeed tall, and very _very_ lean. She stood with her back to the beach, watching the swirling masses of white water break against the cliffs. She was wearing a black tank top and cut off denim shorts. Not the store bought variety, but the these-used-to-be-pants-but-they-broke-so-I-hacked-the-legs-off kind. A tattoo washed from her left elbow over her right shoulder and vanished down the back of her shirt, and another crept down her left thigh, stopping just short of her knee. Foam swirled over her bare feet, waves broke against her shins, but she didn’t move.

“Hey! Are you crazy?!” Raven demanded, “You’re going to get pulled!”

The woman ignored her, in fact, Raven couldn’t be entirely sure that she’d even heard her. Growling softly, she hobbled a little further forwards, until she could reach out and grab the woman’s wrist. However, before she could even lift her arm, a wave slammed into her shins, knocking her backwards, where she was sure to get a concussion, roll off the narrow outcropping and drown.

She didn’t. She didn’t even fall. Two strong arms wrapped around her waist and carelessly, but gently pulled her back onto her feet.

“ _Christ!_ ” Raven swore. She’d been planning on swearing when the wave hit her, but the taller blonde moved so fast, that she could only gasp out a swear after she’d regained her balance.

“Well that’s a new one. Usually people call me Anya, but seeing as it’s you, feel free to nail me against a tree.” The woman deadpanned, retracting her arms. Raven immediately missed the warmth.

“Are you _crazy_? It’s spring high coming in, and you’re standing on the edge of the rocks, above a twenty meter drop off!”

“Yes. Yes I am. Are you? After all, you’re now doing the exact same thing.”

At that, Raven may or may not have lost her temper. After all, she’d had a long day and had been on her way home for a nice cup of tea, or perhaps, glass of scotch, when she’d seen the crazy person standing on the end of the rocks, rocks that local fisherman called Devils Spike for a reason, and as a decent person, she’d gone out to check on them, and that person, _goddamn that person_ , had just driven the final spike into Raven’s war club.

 

But the stupid thing was, after a good ten minutes of yelling, and another wave trying to knock her off her feet, Raven found herself being helped along the sharp, slippery rocks by the stranger. And that wasn’t even the stupid part, not yet. The stranger _Anya_ , had dipped her head slightly in farewell, followed by a _see you around Raven_ , and then spun and marched over the sand with long loping strides.

It was only when Raven got home, that she realised that she’d never actually told the sharply cheekboned, stupid golden eyed blonde her name.

It was a few days before Raven saw the lanky woman again, once again on the beach, although this time, she was closer to the cliff, standing knee deep in the waves.

“Are you _crazy_?” Raven demanded again, standing at the edge of the water, her hands on her hips, her sore leg jutting out to the side.

“We’ve been over this Raven. Yes, I’m crazy.”

“This isn’t a swimming beach! People have _drowned._ There’s signs up!”

“I saw.” Anya said calmly, just loud enough to be heard over the suck and sob of the waves pummelling the sharp sand.

 Raven never understood how people could ever walk barefoot on beaches like this. Sharp shell shards lay lying in wait for the tender skin of the foot, and various stinging creatures were often washed up.

“Why can’t you just go swim on the main beach, like everyone else?”

“I grew up swimming here.”

“This beach has been closed for close on fifty years. Didn’t you hear me when I said people drowned?”

“I heard you.”

“Then will you _please_ get out the water so that the police won’t question me when your body washes up? Swim sometime else. Like when I’m at work. Then I’m not responsible for your death.”

“As you wish.” Anya shot back, and turned and walked out the water. Raven wished that she would just turn and walk back in. Her board shorts were...short, and her tanned legs went on for miles. Of course, when the girl was in the water, Raven had been staring right into the sun, but now that she wasn’t, Raven realised that she was wearing a bikini top.

 

It took twenty minutes of standing under a deluge of icy water that Raven finally managed to get the image of sharp hipbones (were all of Anya’s bones that sharp? Cheekbones, check, hip bones, yep.) and a flat stomach that rippled with not-so-hidden abs when the owner had bent down to pick up her shirt which had been lying on the sand next to pair of sunglasses.

It took twenty three minutes for her to remember the three shiny symmetrical scars that started on her right thigh, ran under the shorts, and reappeared on her hip before curling behind her back. Three scars. Like claws.

It took twenty minutes under a cold shower, three under a slightly warmer one, seven actually showering, and four minutes hunting through her mostly empty fridge for Raven to realise that the tattoos were missing.

 

Then it was a week. A week later, Raven found the lanky blonde in the supermarket buying a mop, a bucket, a bright orange child’s fishing net, a set of shot glasses, a roll of duct tape, a small fish tank and a sheet of fish stickers.

In fact, all of the above were stuffed in the glass fish tank, and so Raven could see them very clearly on her way to get some food, because frankly, toast and peanut butter was getting old. Bread and peanut butter was okay, but then the bread started going stale. The mop handle was sticking up in the air like a flagpole.

“For your kid?” Raven asked.

“I don’t have a kid.”

“Next thing you’ll be telling me that the stickers are for your bathroom mirror.”

Anya blinked. Once, twice.

“Possibly.”

Raven wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. In fact, after circling the store three times, Raven realised that the damn place didn’t even _sell_ fish tanks. Which meant that the blonde had carried it there, and done her shopping with it.

“Hello? Earth to Raven?” Octavia Blake, the co-owner of the tiny store snapped her fingers in front of Raven’s face.

“Jesus O!”

“You’re been staring at the dog toys for five minutes and forty nine seconds. Do you need help choosing, or are you day dreaming?”

“O, who’s that new chick? The blonde?”

Octavia frowned for a moment, then her face brightened.

“Oh, you mean Anya?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, her name’s Anya Riveria and she just moved here. She’s living in that small house on the cliffs. That’s about all I know. Lincoln knows her.”

Lincoln. Lincoln Pine, another thorn in Raven’s side. Lincoln Pine arrived just after Octavia opened her shop, and frankly, Raven knew next to nothing about him. Raven didn’t like not knowing what was going on in Arkadia. A town so small that it didn’t even show up on most maps, and didn’t even have a school. Raven knew everyone in Arkadia. From Octavia and Bellamy, siblings that opened their store straight out of high school, to Clarke Griffin the doctor that dabbled in art, or more like artist that doubled as the town paramedic.

From Granny Callie with her crazy stories of the ocean and excellent choc chip cookies that she baked every Tuesday, to John Murphy, the stinky fisherman who lived with Callie.

And to top the tiny town’s little batch of Crazy Stew, there was Raven Reyes, the twelve year old who’d marched (or staggered) up to Clarke’s doorstep, and promptly collapsed against the then eleven year old Clarke’s pink bicycle.

She’d flown through school, entering high school two years after she’d pitched up on the Griffin’s stoop, and graduated at 16. She studied two different engineering degrees, then returned and took over the seven-years-dead-Jake’s garage.

She fixed everything from cars to boats. She fixed houses, hell, she drew up the plan’s for Octavia’s store (Bellamy joined the military after helping his sister achieve her goal), and yet Raven could never fix two things. Her leg, which had been broken and then badly set, and then shattered, and the hole that Jake Griffin’s death left in her life.

The man had seen the dirty, small, smelly twelve year old on his porch, had picked her up, carried her to his car, and driven her to the hospital, some hour and a half’s drive away. He’d sat there for two days, and then driven her back to his house. He’d batted away Abby’s sharp questions, and even sharper comments on the way that Raven did things, and taught her to fix cars.

When he died in her final year of high school, she’d grit her teeth and studied even harder so that she could reopen his garage.

But then two years after Raven returned, two new people moved into town. Indra Something-German-Sounding, and Lincoln Pine. Indra was about thirty seven, and Lincoln was twenty three. Two years older than Octavia. They started dating within the year, and were just about inseparable. They came from Polis, and that was all Raven knew. Indra worked in Octavia’s shop, and Lincoln was in some sort of governmental position. Hush hush and all that crap.

Two new people were a shock to the system. _Three_ in less than five years was enough to make Raven’s alarms go off. Especially because they all knew each other.

Raven walked all the way home, swung open the front door, then realised she’d actually forgotten her groceries and car at the shop. Fuck.

Ah well, not the first time. Octavia would bring them by later.

~~~

 

Raven saw Anya the very next day. She’d limped her way along a teeny, moss covered wooden walkway, unknown to most of the older, and younger generations with a backpack of food, a book, and a towel. She was gonna have a picnic down in the cove where Clarke, Octavia and her would play Pirates, and chase each other with sticks, pretend to drown in a deep rock pool, and make little rafts out of driftwood. It was the cove where they’d pitch Jake’s tent up by the forest, and build a big bonfire on the soft white sand, and drink the night away.

She’d barely touched the soft sand with a toe when she noticed the tall figure balancing along the pile of rocks up against the side of the cliff. No, not balancing. Sitting. Sitting with her legs in the water, staring intently into the waves.

Raven wasn’t sure whether to growl or smile. Sure, she was pissed off that this _newcomer_ , this _stranger!_ knew about the cove, but on the other hand, it felt right to see the lanky blonde around, like she’d just always been there.

So Raven settled with huffing and shuffling over to her usual tree to plonk her backpack under. So what if Anya was there? There was enough space in the cove to play a full scale game of hockey (which was probably how Octavia had done all her training, chasing crabs up and down the beach) so they wouldn’t step on each other’s toes too much.

 

Raven was wrong. Very, _very_ wrong.

Because the weather, really, _really_ hated her. The sky was bright and sunny one moment, and the next, buckets of icy cold water were tumbling out the sky, and both girls instantly made a beeline for the cave. _The Cave_. _Raven’s Cave_.

The cave that you wouldn’t know about unless you’d spent vast amounts of time fucking around on the slippery rocks next to the cliff. The cave that dissolved into a series of tunnels, one of which practically ended on Granny Callie’s doorstep.

The cave that Raven now found herself sharing with a strange woman with eyes like glowing coals. Anya kept her gaze fixed on the floor. Then the walls, covered in Clarke’s charcoal drawings. They used to joke that someday scientists would discover the cave and wonder what kind of fucking caveman drew three girls around a bonfire, but hey, that was for the scientists to figure out.

Somehow, in the two and a half hours that they were stuck in the cave, neither of them said a word. Raven sighed and pulled out her book, and passed the time by reading, whereas Anya shot a glare at the sky, then turned and marched into one of the numerous tunnels. Part of Raven hoped that the blonde would get lost and never return.

Another part felt the urge to call after her and warn her about the hole that sank into the floor, and if you fell in would tug you along underwater for a minute and a half before spitting you out in the cove. Raven, Clarke and Octavia had tested that theory numerous times, before Octavia, the little seal pup, had tied a rope around her waist and jumped, giving the other two girls strict orders to pull her back in after two minutes, or if she tugged five times in a row.

After a minute and thirty seconds, she gave three short sharp tugs, and Clarke and Raven had scampered out the cave to see O waving happily in the breakers.

Of course, the instant the rain slowed down, the blonde walked back in, and part of Raven swore because she hadn’t drowned, whilst another part wanted to hug her. So of course, Raven merely raised an eyebrow, and continued reading.

She didn’t say anything when she left, the blonde girl was now even further out on the rocks, in fact, she was sitting _in_ the water on one of the submerged boulders. How that girl didn’t have pneumonia or hyperthermia yet, Raven didn’t know.

~~~

 

Anya proceeded to march through town carrying some of the strangest things Raven had ever seen anyone march through town with. The fish tank was only the beginning, because the next time Raven saw her, she was carrying a _fish_. An honest to god, meter long fish! What kind of fish, Raven couldn’t say. The dead variety.

But there Anya was in her ragged denim shorts, carrying a fish.

The next time, she was carrying an inflatable kiddie pool. Fully inflated.

Then it was a kite. No, she wasn’t carrying the kite, she was flying the kite, and walking beneath it.

Then Raven saw her, _inside_ the kiddie pool. She was sitting in it, looking as regal as ever, bobbing up and down on the slight swell. Her long legs dangled over the side, feet in the water, and her head rested against the other side, and yet she still made it look like a throne.

“Can you not read? Do you not listen? No swimming!”

“But I’m not swimming. I’m floating in a cheap plastic boat.”

“When you drown, I never knew you, understand?”

“You seem to be awfully concerned about my health Raven.”

Raven left the idiot to float in her kiddie pool. Hopefully one of those giant sharks would come along and eat her.

 

The next time Raven saw her, she was genuinely worried. It was almost dark, and Raven had stopped by Octavia’s house after work to drop off a clock that she’d fixed, hence she was later than usual on her sunset walk along the beach.

The by now familiar silhouette was in the water again, but further in than Raven had ever seen her, waves lapping at her strong shoulders. Somehow, it seemed like Anya was actually closer to shore than usual, even though the water was much higher.

“You know, sharks like to eat at this time of night.” Raven began, fully prepared to lapse into her _No Swimming On My Goddamn Beach_ speech, but her words didn’t even earn a response.

“I don’t want a newspaper delivered to me tomorrow morning with your picture on the cover, y’hear me?” Raven demanded.

Not even Anya’s hair moved. The girl seemed to be fixed in place like a glitch in a video game. Her sharp gaze was locked on the oncoming waves.

Needless to say, Raven didn’t sleep so well that night. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the waves lapping higher and higher against that angular face. Now her chin was under the water. Her mouth. Her nose. Those perfect Cheekbones. Her smouldering eyes. Forehead. The last glimmer of golden hair. Then the dark water engulfed it all, and Raven woke up gasping for air.

 

It was as soon as the sky was lighter than pitch black that Raven was tugging on her shoes and pulling a blanket over her shoulders, and limping out the door. She walked as fast as she could down the paved little pathway, and then across the sand, straining to see anything in the dim grey light. Fog covered the slate coloured sand, and Raven practically tripped over the taller woman.

“ _Christ!_ ” Raven swore as her eyes registered the shape curled up in a ball on the sand.

It took a while, but a response came, weak and exhausted, “We’ve already had this conversation Raven.”

“ _Christ!_ You absolute _idiot_! You could have drowned!” Raven yelped, falling down in a heap next to the sandy, frozen body. Anya was silent as Raven yelled. She was silent when the brunette yanked the blanket off her shoulders and used it to clean some of the sand off, and then gave up and just wrapped her in the pre-warmed fluff.

Anya sat up slowly, drawing her long legs up to her chest and curling further into the blanket, a rare moment of weakness.

Finally, Raven ran out of steam, and just sat next to her, staring at the waves.

“Why?”

Anya sighed and wrapped her sandy arms around her legs.

“Have you ever loved someone Raven? Someone you weren’t supposed to? Someone who you couldn’t tell anyone about? I loved someone like that. She loved to swim. All the time. In the sea, the lake, a river, a swimming pool. She drowned one day. It was just a day, same as every other. After supper, she went for a swim. I went to sleep. When I woke up, the police were dragging her body out of the waves and onto the sand.”

“Shit, that sucks.”

“I don’t believe that it’s even possible for her to drown, Raven, I’ve seen her dive off a boat in the middle of a storm, and she was fine. There’s no way she would’ve drowned on the beach where she grew up, she could swim there blindfolded and avoid all the currents. She didn’t get caught in a rip, or get a cramp, or tire herself out. Something happened to her.”

“What was her name? I could do some digging, I know some people.”

Anya stiffened, her golden eyes darkened a few shades.

“Good morning Raven.” She said abruptly, and pushed herself to her feet, wobbling across the sand.

 

~~~

 

 

Raven was grumpy. She’d pinched her thumb at work, and it was throbbing in time with her heartbeat, she was hungry, her leg hurt, and Octavia was out of stock of pain medication. Needless to say, Raven was feeling below the weather. But it was Tuesday, which meant mouthfuls of sugary, chocolaty, buttery goodness, warm tea, and lots of attention were waiting for her at Granny Callie’s small wooden house.

The thought cheered her up enough to hobble up the gravel pathway and through the front door. Only to find a certain blonde sitting on the railing of Granny Callie’s stoop, nibbling on a cookie and listening intently to Granny Callie’s ramblings.

 

No one knew why everyone called Granny Callie well... Granny Callie. No one was directly related to her, hell, no one even knew anything about her, other than that she baked amazing things, was always open for a conversation, and there was always something fun to do at her house. There were movies, or you could paint the stoop and fence. Birthday cakes were always baked there, every child knew her as Granny Callie, and Raven had never thought about it twice until Jake had also called her Granny Callie, and then she started wondering exactly how old the woman was.

She hadn’t changed, not in Raven’s fourteen years of knowing her. Her eyes were still warm, her hair snow white and silky soft. Her wrinkled hands were soft, her bones creaked, her smile was warm, and she knew how to deal with nearly every situation. From six year olds falling off their bikes, to a teen with a broken heart, to a spiteful Abby Griffin after a fight with a miserable Clarke. Granny Callie was there, and she somehow knew exactly what to do, what to say.

 

But now there was a stranger in Granny Callie’s house. Well, not a stranger, Anya had been around for almost a month, but a _Stranger_. Someone who wasn’t born in Arkadia. Strangers weren’t welcome.

Anya looked up and caught Raven’s eyes in a steady stare.

“You’ll have to excuse me, it seems you have a visitor. See you later Callie.” Anya smiled, not breaking her stare.

Raven’s cookie tasted like dust. It pissed her off. Granny Callie couldn’t tell Raven anything more about Anya than what she already knew. Anya Riveria. Single, no kids. Lives up in the house on the cliff.

 

 _Callie_. No one called Granny Callie...well...Callie. Raven and Clarke called her Granny Callie, Clarke’s parents called her Granny Callie, Hell, even Clarke’s grandparents had called her Granny Callie. She’d always been there, and she always would. Sure, logic and medicine said that the woman should be dead, but Raven wasn’t going to question the existence of any entity that gave her cookies on a weekly basis.

 

Needless to say, Raven was grouchy as she slouched her way along the sand. Out of a recently developed habit, she glanced out along the rolling slate-coloured swells. There was no lean silhouette today. Only a bright orange blob sitting in a rockpool. Anya’s fishing net.

Raven had some rules with her beach.

  1. No Swimming.
  2. No Sailing
  3. No Sex or Skinny Dipping (see no.1)
  4. No Littering!
  5. No Vehicles



And yet, Anya had broken nearly every single bloody rule out of the top five (others included No Dying, and No Electronics Other Than Cameras And No Phones Don’t Count).

Raven grumbled as she marched up the boardwalk that ran from her house to Anya’s. There were many boardwalks, riddling the thick trees and bushes that covered the cliff. One led down to the cove, another to Anya’s house, one marked in blue chalk led to the top of the cliff, one marked in green led to a lake.

Octavia got lost for eight hours once, after taking three lefts, then a right, and somehow winding up in the tunnels. Clarke had come up with the idea of chalk and nail varnish, but still, it was hazardous for anyone who hadn’t spent years running over the worn planks.

The Cliff House had been empty for years. Granny Callie once told Raven that the previous owner had been the girl who had drowned on Raven’s Beach. S-something. Sarah? Samantha? Raven couldn’t quite remember.

The Cliff House wasn’t so much a house so much as a tiny cottage, with a bedroom, an open plan kitchen and living room, a bathroom, and a tiny scullery. It was positioned far enough from the edge to prevent loss of house and life if the cliff crumbled a bit at the edges, but close enough that spray splattered the windows during storms. It had a wraparound porch, and it looked like Anya had taken to gardening, because rose bushes were climbing up the cracked wooden fence, and a neat herb garden grew along one side of the house.

A hammock was strung up from the kitchen window to the porch railing, a book lay on the driftwood table. Flowers bloomed happily in boxes along the window frames, and the entire garden smelled like fresh bread and basil.

Cautiously, Raven manoeuvred her way down the steps of the boardwalk onto the gravel. Now she could see Anya. Or more specifically, Anya’s arm, dangling over the edge of the faded hammock, fingers just not reaching the ground.

The tall blonde lay somewhat awkwardly, her right leg bent at the knee, sticking straight up into the air, her foot tucked under her left leg, leaving her scars on display. Her left arm was dangling over the side of her bed, and her right was curled under her head, acting as a pillow.

An actual pillow, covered in a plain white cover was lying on the floor, and Raven narrowed her eyes at the sight of a familiar grey blanket covering Anya’s lower left leg, tangled around her feet.

Lazily, one golden eye blinked open at the sound of crunching gravel. It fluttered closed again, then both eyes flew open, and Anya scrambled for the blanket, trying (and failing) to cover her sinfully long legs and most of her exposed torso. Raven snickered. Serves her right for wearing boy shorts and a shirt that in _no_ way would ever fit her, to sleep in, outside, in broad daylight.

“Raven!”

“Good eyes you have there Riveria.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, I originally came to return your property, because you seem to have a blatant disregard for the signs on the beach, one of which states clearly _No Litter_ , but now that I’m here, I’d like to have my blanket back, thank you very much.”

Anya narrowed her fiery eyes slightly.

 

~~~

 

Raven would never admit it, but she did sleep with the blanket under her pillow for the next week, because it smelled like wood smoke, cloves and for some reason, like the cool breeze that came off the mountains.

Raven would also never admit that she started to look forward to her daily banter with the taller woman. Sure, it was usually in the form of snarky one liners, or casual insults (or snide innuendos from Anya) but it became routine.

Every now and then they even walked along the beach together, if Raven came home slightly later than usual. If it was nearing dark, Anya would walk her to her doorstep, and then vanish along a pathway before Raven could turn after unlocking her door.

It was a bit eerie, and Raven was starting to think that her closest neighbour was, in fact, a vampire. Octavia agreed whole heartedly with her theory, whilst Clarke was sceptical. Raven casually put a clove of garlic in her pocket one day, and only succeeded in gassing out her favourite hoodie for a week. Raven struck vampire off the list.

The next theory (brought up by Octavia) was that she was a mermaid. Raven protested that she’d seen the woman in question in the water multiple times, and there was no tail in sight. Octavia suggested that Anya had been using her magic powers to keep her legs. This was several drinks into their games night. Clarke then proposed that _Raven_ splashed water on Anya when she wasn’t expecting it, if what Octavia said was true, then Anya would grow a tail and they’d know if the illusive woman was, in fact, half fish.

Raven casually turned the hosepipe on the blonde the next time she walked past the house. Anya swore, and demanded to know what Raven was doing, watering a dry patch of dirt at four in the morning. Raven responded that she was adjusting to daylight savings. It was still dark.

It was with a crestfallen face that Raven told her best friends that Anya, the creepy woman who lived alone on top of the cliffs and swam every day, was not a mermaid.

Octavia agreed with Raven when she said that they needed to know more. Clarke was too busy snoring into Octavia’s couch cushions to talk them down.

It would’ve ended a lot better for the both of them if Clarke had been awake, because Indra caught them red-handed climbing out of a window in Anya’s house. They could’ve just used the front door, but Octavia had reckoned that the window was more dramatic. Thankfully, Raven had quickly remembered that she had a wrench in pocket and declared that they were borrowing it.

The only thing that they found in Anya’s house was a sleeping cat, a half eaten loaf of bread, a few sparse groceries, five bookcases filled to the brim with books in every imaginable language, and hundreds of carved animals lined up on the windowsills. There were lions with flared manes, monkey’s with tiny, precise fingers, bears with coarse fur, elephants with smooth tusks, and then there were dragons with sweeping wings, and griffins with ruffled feathers, snakes with six wings, something that resembled a manta ray, and countless other indescribable things.

There was a locked trunk under the kitchen table, but not even Raven could crack the lock without breaking it. There was no TV, and candles dotted the flat surfaces. The bed was not made, but Raven had already guessed that she slept in the hammock.

The theory that Octavia was sticking to was that Anya was some kind of wood elf, and the only way to prove that was with fire, because wood elves hated the stuff. Raven had to tell her best friend that her theory was redundant, because Anya often made small driftwood fires on the beach.

 

~~~

 

It was with some mystery creature (not a vampire, mermaid, or woodelf) that Raven found herself spending a surprisingly large amount of time with. Anya wasn’t _bad_ company per se, she just didn’t speak much. Sure, she swam on Raven’s beach, but she’d been doing it for several months, and she hadn’t drowned yet, so Raven’s scolding came from habit, rather than concern. She’d hate to admit it, but Anya was rubbing off on her.

She found the dry, sarcastic comments hilarious, and the silent company comforting on days when her leg hurt too much, and the sun just seemed too bright, the world too loud. What really touched Raven’s heart was when Anya came up to her house to look for her when she’d stayed home due to her leg not being able to carry her outside, let alone to work.

Anya had knocked quietly on the door, and when Raven called out that it was unlocked, the blonde had announced herself, and _I was wondering where you were, no one interrupted my swim today_. Upon finding Raven lying on the floor with her leg up on the coffee table, she’d frowned, vanished, and then reappeared with a sandwich, clearly _not_ from Raven’s kitchen, because once again, all Raven had left was stale bread and peanut butter, as well as a mug of coffee, this time, from Raven’s kitchen, because it was in her favourite mug.

It was then that it became apparent to her that perhaps, just maybe, the feelings were mutual.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

The sand was warm, but not uncomfortably so as Raven walked along the beach, her gaze fixed on the ground as she hunted for shells, or cuttlefish. She was walking halfway up the beach, just barely touching the high tide water mark, whilst Anya was –for lack of a better word- _skipping_ through ankle deep water (Anya would have liked to announce to the general public that she did not, infact, skip, and she never had, or would), watching the foam swirl about her legs. Her usual shorts were sitting low on her hips, and her black tank top was doing a poor job of covering the line of skin that the shorts had neglected.

Raven quickly stopped staring at Anya’s legs and moved it further along the beach. There...no legs, no gay-fanfiction-level sliver of skin, just something weird in the waves. _What?_

Carefully, she manoeuvred down the slight dune and walked more quickly to investigate. She didn’t see Anya’s golden eyes flash in the sun for a moment when she looked to her left and found Raven missing, and she didn’t really notice when Anya bounded few steps, her feet never quite submerging entirely in the surf.

“There’s something in the water.” Raven stated, pointing at the dark shape. Anya squinted, gasped softly, then ran. And by _Gods_ could she run. Raven finally understood the function of those long legs, other than making harmless mechanics’ brains malfunction.

By the time Raven reached the scene, Anya had splashed into the water, and was now dragging the lifeless object onto the beach. Not object. Person. But definitely lifeless.

Dark hair covered a pale face, and her clothes were some strange type of hard and soft leather. Raven’s head replaced the girl’s dark hair, with blonde, lengthened her limbs, sharpened her cheekbones, made a tattoo creep across her collarbones. Raven’s head, was being very unhelpful.

“Raven, hold this.” Anya ordered, shoving a backpack in her direction. Anya hadn’t been wearing a backpack. The backpack was perfectly dry.

Raven was too distracted by the backpack for a moment to notice Anya twisting the cap off a bottle of what looked like water. She wasn’t too distracted to notice Anya trying to pour water down a drowned girl’s throat.

“Hey! You can’t do-“

“Phone Clarke. Tell her to meet us by your house, then phone Lincoln.” Anya’s voice had icicles hanging off them.

“What? Why? Surely I should call-“

“ _Reivon!_ ”

Raven gulped and did as she was told. She was halfway through her conversation with Lincoln, and midway through the word _beach_ when the dead girl coughed, spluttered, and then threw up mouthfuls of water. Anya quickly turned her onto her side, and then they both stared in horror at the patch of red sand under the girl’s body.

“ _Nou! Nou nou nou, Leksa! Ste yuj, beja Leksa._ ” Anya mumbled, frantically running her hands over the girl’s clothing, trying to find the source of blood.  She found it rather quickly, seeing as it was a rather large, glaringly obvious source of blood, as far as sources of blood go.  Wrapped around the girl’s arm, like some sort of three headed snake, were three symmetrical gashes.

“Holy shit!” Raven squeaked.

“Indeed. Is Clarke on her way?” Anya grunted, smoothly lifting the barely alive, let alone conscious girl into her arms.

“What? Oh, yeah.”

“Then let’s walk.”

And walk they did, right through Raven’s front door, and right to her kitchen table. Raven hastily cleared her jar of peanut butter off the smooth granite, and dumped a blob of bleach on the surface, clearing the last week’s worth of sandwich crumbs, coffee stains and minor tragedies. Anya raised her eyebrows at the newly sterilised table, but gently laid the not-so-dead girl down.

“You know her?”

“Yes. She’s my... _skrish_ , my cousin.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know the proper translation, but I think Lexa is the closest.”

“English isn’t your first language?”

Anya levelled a steely glare in Raven’s general direction. Raven stopped asking questions, fearing for her life.

It seemed for once, that Clarke Griffin was around when Raven needed her, because no sooner had Raven sympathetically jammed a pillow under the patient’s head, when the blonde blew through the doors like an out of breathe hurricane.

Lincoln and Octavia followed her five minutes later, but their only purpose seemed to be to grab Anya, who had taken to pacing around the room as soon as Clarke had started examining the hapless swimmer.

“Well, lucky for her, the only things _wrong_ are her arm, and she’s dehydrated and exhausted.” Clarke eventually declared. The artist sighed and snapped off her gloves to smooth her hair out her face.

“ _Dehydrated?_ ” Raven  demanded, holding out a bandanna to keep Clarke’s hair back, “Clarke, we found her _in the ocean_.”

“You the one with a degree in medicine Raven? I know where you found her, but that’s all I can tell you without taking off her clothes, and I don’t feel like trying to explain to Anya why I took off her...”

“Cousin’s”

“...cousin’s clothes.”

“Good point. Hang on for a moment.”

Raven called Octavia to ask Lincoln to ask Anya if they could remove the brunette’s clothes for _strictly medical purposes, besides, her clothes are soaking, and she needs to rest_. It sounded like Anya was punching something (sounded suspiciously like the something was Lincoln) but apparently she gave her consent.

 

~~~

With Lexa safely asleep in the spare room, her arm patched up and in a sling, Clarke sat at the newly cleaned kitchen table with a mug of warm tea at her fingertips.

“So now what can you tell me about her? Come on Clarkey, I need to know if some werewolf is sleeping in my guest room.”

“Doctor patient confidentiality Raven...”

“But you’re not a doctor.”

“Fair enough. Well, she has three lacerations on her arm, seem to be from some kind of animal. She didn’t seem to have any water in her lungs. She’s physically _flawless_ , but I would almost say she has a living in martial arts, judging by scarring on her knuckles. Her ribs are bruised, and she has a scar on her leg that seems too straight to have been an accidental cut. She has nothing in common with Anya other than her physical prowess. Their tattoo designs seem tribal, although I can’t tell you which culture. Maybe they grew up together.”

“Well, that helps.”

“Raven, I know you’re curious about everything, but please remember that they’re both humans.”

“Griffin, you offend me. Now get out. It’s late and I’m tired.”

~~~

It was about nine the next morning (Saturday, thank the Pope) when Lexa emerged from the guest room. Her eyes were a startlingly bright green and they pinned Raven to her stool. Even wearing clothes that didn’t fit her and no shoes, with her arm in a sling, and a bruise spreading along one of her cheeks, she had an air of authority.

Raven had never cared for people with airs of authority, so she decided that whilst it was impressive that someone so small in physique could appear so intimidating, she would act the way she always did.

“Hey, you’re alive. Want some coffee?” She offered cheerily.

The stranger frowned slightly, tilting her head to the side, kind of like a puppy.

“Coffee?” She repeated, over exaggerating every syllable with care, as though she’d never heard the word before.

Raven made the poor girl a cup of coffee. Anyone who’d forgotten the word for coffee wouldn’t make it very long. Perhaps she had amnesia. Would make sense, what with the trauma of drowning and then having some crazy hedge-witch pour more water down your throat.

“Careful, it’s hot.” Raven slid a mug across the table to her silent guest.

“Hot. Coffee.” Lexa repeated, lifting the steaming mug to her mouth and taking a sip, “ _hot!_ ”

“I _told_ you!” Raven tutted.

The door swung open, and Anya walked in, looking...well...if Raven didn’t know any better, she’d almost say the blonde was _hungover_.

“ _Leksa!_ ” She greeted, huffing slightly when the shorter girl cannoned into her arms.

“ _Onya, ai vout in yu gonplei ste odon. Yu din kom op, ai-“_

_“Moba Leksa, bilaik don nou taim. Nou nodatim nowe. Ai swega em klin.”_

_“Em laik meizen.”_ Lexa smirked, her eyes bright, almost teasing.

_“Chit yu chich op?”_ Anya growled in reply, narrowing her eyes.

_“Daun gada.”_

Anya faced her cousin with murder in her smile, and Lexa, wisely started backing away. It would have been an excellent plan, but she hadn’t really accounted for the front door, so she backed right into Clarke, and they both fell ass over knee down the porch steps. Raven personally blamed Anya’s cat who had taken to hanging around Raven’s house.

Pulled by that strange gravitational force that a collision of that magnitude between two people generates, Raven found herself standing next to a smirking Anya, watching the other two girls try and untangle themselves.

By some extreme feat of acrobatics, Lexa had managed to spin them, saving Clarke from smashing her head in the dirt, and instead cushioning her fall, with, well, one dehydrated, exhausted, arm-in-a-sling-ed, body.

“Jesus Christ, I am so sorry!” Clarke flustered, her face less than two inches from her cushion’s, her one hand safely on the ground, the other decidedly _out_ of that safe zone.

“ _Leksa, yu gadahod shoun of_.”

“ _Shof **op** Onya!_ ”

Clarke managed to get up, only putting her knee in the wrong place once, and then she went full on _Mama Bear Griffin_ on the poor cushion.

“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing out of bed? I didn’t spend an hour stitching you up so you could roll around in the dirt like some kind of dusty animal! Get back inside, and you better hope that all you stitches are intact, or so help me, I will undo and redo every single one of them. And I _don’t_ have anaesthetic, so it _will_ hurt.”

Lexa was busy doing an astoundingly good meerkat impersonation, whilst Raven was a useless blob of giggles, and Anya seemed to be trying not to laugh. Or she was hexing Clarke, Raven couldn’t be too sure.

“She doesn’t understand English Clarke.” The snickering brunette managed to wheeze out between bouts of laughter.

Lexa may not have understood English, but she did understand Clarke’s tone, and the extended arm pointing towards the house. Somewhat sulkily, she trooped up the stairs, and vanished into the kitchen, a mumbling Clarke hot on her heels.

~~~

Lexa followed Anya home, and Clarke’s eyes followed Lexa out the front door.

“She’s pretty.” Raven commented, retrieving the only constant in her life from the sink.

“How long have you had that jar of peanut butter Raven?”

“Long enough to know that you’re dodging my question Griffin.” She popped a spoonful of crunchy goodness into her mouth.

“Why was it even in the-you know what, _I’m_ not going to ask. And you didn’t even ask me a question Raven.”

Raven eyed her critically, and then pointed at her with the spoon, “So then you’re totally on board if I _ahem_ seduce Lexa, y’know, teach her the better parts of the English _tongue_ if you catch my drift.”

“Oh please Rae, as if your eyes weren’t for Anya and Anya only.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your eyes were literally glued to her ass as she walked out.”

“I can’t help it that she’s got a great ass. Besides, I’m attracted to attractive things. Her ass, just happens to be one of them.”

~~~

Raven hated change. It was one of the reasons that she couldn’t stand Anya’s presence when she first arrived. She was new, and changed something. Then she grew accustomed to the surely blonde, and it was okay. Perhaps Raven was even fond of her.

But then Lexa washed up, _literally_ , and it changed something. Anya was no longer such a silent companion. She was constantly answering questions, fired non-stop at her from her _cousin_ , who by the way, learned to speak English in a month, and the result was she sounded like a grammatically stilted dictionary, or sometimes, Anya wasn’t even on the beach in the evenings at all.

So what if Raven started avoiding the beach, and instead walked along the road, even though she hated walking through the tunnel that the trees formed, because it made the ground seem uneven, and she jarred her knee at least once a day.

So what if she pretended not to see the two figures walking along the empty strip of sand in the evenings, not to see Anya bodily lift Lexa (who also managed to heal within a week, making Clarke finally agree with her two friends that there was something not quite right about the new people who lived in the house on the cliff) and toss her into the ocean, and not to see Lexa charge out of the waves and tackle her to the sand.

So what if she often found herself snarling and tossing a spanner across her garage, where it would hit the wall with a satisfying _clang_ and then spin under a car, where Raven would have to crawl along the floor to get it back.

So what if she even started missing her Tuesday cookie dates with Granny Callie, because Anya and/or Lexa would often be there.

So what. It wasn’t going to change anything, because _everything_ had already changed. Raven was merely adjusting her routine to ensure optimum chances of avoiding the goddamn werewolves living just a boardwalk away.

~~~

It was late on a Wednesday night when there was a knock at the door. More like, someone took their fist to the door, because there is no way in hell that Raven would have heard a knock over the goddamn hurricane that was brewing outside.

Slightly nervously, Raven grabbed a softball bat that she’d won off Octavia in a bet in one hand, her bottle of whiskey in the other, and went to go see who the fuck was re-enacting a horror movie.

Anya stood on the porch, and for some reason, it appeared she was steaming. Literally, a fine white mist seemed to be rising from her skin. Raven blinked hard, and the mist vanished, and Anya gave her a slightly quizzical look. For those who don’t understand how little Anya used facial expression, a slightly quizzical look entails the slight raising of her left eyebrow.

“What did I do?” She asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Excuse me?”

“What did I do?”

“What did you do?”

“Yes, Raven. What did I do?”

A clap of thunder split the sky, and Raven jumped as the power cut.

A pair of warm hands wrapped around her biceps and gently steered her backwards, into the house. A soft glint of gold gleamed through the darkness, and then cupboards opened, and then closed, and suddenly Anya was holding a flickering candle. In Raven’s kitchen.

Raven didn’t even remember ever _buying_ candles.

She shut the door, and slid onto a kitchen stool across from the frowning blonde, toying with the bottle in her hands. Raven didn’t believe in pouring her alcohol into glasses, she liked the weight of the bottle. Anya placed the tiny golden light on the table between them, before leaning her elbows on the table and leaning forwards slightly.

“What did I do?” She repeated softly.

“Your clothes are dry.” Raven noticed.

“What?”

“Your clothes...how the fuck is there a tornado trying to kill us, and you’re perfectly dry?”

“I have an umbrella.”

“Liar.”

“Raven, please. I didn’t walk all the way here, _in the rain_ , to talk about my clothing. What. Did. I. Do.”

“Listen here Riveria. Yes, I know your last name, I googled you. I don’t like change, I never have, and I never will. Change when I was younger meant one asshole moving out, and another one moving in. Change when I moved here, was my foster father dying. Then it was my foster mother moving out of Arkadia and practically abandoning me and my foster sister.

Change in college meant my boyfriend cheating on me with Clarke. For seven months. Seven months is a long time to casually forget that you’ve had a girlfriend since senior year. Change meant me drinking myself into oblivion every goddamn night for two months because apparently, I was as dispensable as those stupid glass bottles

Change then meant some crazy idiot swimming on my beach, and ruining my Tuesday cookie run. Then change meant that that idiot was actually the best damn company I can get without them knowing my tragic back story. Change meant that I could walk along a beach, without thinking about how much my leg hurt, or how much I’m worth.

And now change is finding out that whilst that idiot knows very little about me, I know even less about them, and they have a cousin, who just washes up on some beach one day, and _should be dead_ , but isn’t. Now that idiot is spending all their time with their cousin, who by the way, isn’t even registered in the system, in _any_ system, and has casually forgotten that I seem to exist.

So the answer, Anya, is nothing. You’ve done nothing. And that is the exact problem. Now get out, because I have _not_ had enough to drink to forget all about this in the morning.”

Raven hadn’t been expecting Anya to carefully pry the bottle out her death grip, and she’d been expecting the blonde to take a long sip even less. She definitely hadn’t been expecting the blonde to walk around the table, place a hand under her chin, and a kiss on her lips. And Raven _certainly_ hadn’t been expecting the taller girl to taste so goddamn _addictive_.

Anya tasted like whiskey, and for some reason, burnt honey, the nice kind, not the _I-Will-Scorch-Your-Mouth-And-The-Last-Thing-You-Will-Taste-For-The-Next-Month-Is-Sadness-And-Regret_ kind.

Another thing Raven had not been expecting was that she _enjoyed_ it. Anya’s hand was pushing her chin up yes, but if Raven wanted to, she could easily move away. The kiss was urgent, but soft.

It lasted only for a moment, and then Anya pulled away, taking a small step backwards, noticing that Raven’s brain was stuck on the Error 404 page. After a split second reboot, the mechanic pulled the neighbourhood sorceress down for a decidedly slower, more leisurely kiss.

Again, it was Anya who pulled away first, one fingertip gently tracing Raven’s jaw line.

“I did something Reyes. Now it’s your turn.” She smirked softly, then turned, and walked back out into the storm.

~~~

“Jesus Rae, pay attention, would ya?”

“Sorry, what?”

“You’ve been holding that bottle of whiskey for the last five minutes. Are you buying it, or do I need to call security?”

“You don’t have security O.”

“Yeah I do. I call ‘em Lefty and Righty. Lincoln’s been teaching me to kick box.”

“Great. What was the question again?”

“Who the fuck did you sleep with? The last time you were this dazed, you were walking home from-oh my god you finally grew a pair and fucked the witch!” Octavia shrieked, jumping up and down slightly like the over excitable Labrador that she was.

“Octavia, I didn’t sleep with Anya. It was stormy, I drank too much and I’m honestly still a little hung-over. Can I please just buy my damn whiskey and cat food?”

“You don’t even _own_ a cat Raven.”

“Science O.”

~~~

Why did everyone have to question her choices, honestly! First it was Octavia with the cat food, then it was Lincoln, checking if she knew that her shirt was on inside out, then it was that goddamn nymph that drove past _in Raven’s car_ and asked her if she forgot anything.

Raven was even questioning Raven when she tried to remember whether or not she’d driven to the shop and Anya was returning the car, or if Anya stole the car to go and fetch her.

“You have a cat?” Anya asked softly, eyes flicking up to check the rear-view mirror, then the side mirrors, then the road, then out the window, and just generally being hyperaware of everything that was going on outside.

“No, but yours seems to live at my house.”

“I don’t have a cat Raven.”

“Liar. I’ve seen you playing with it on the porch you softie.”

Anya was silent for the rest of the trip. Raven found it hilarious that her cheeks were a tad more pink than usual. She found it slightly less hilarious when she realised that she’d only bought whiskey and cat food, which meant she was stuck with peanut butter and coffee for the rest of the weekend, because she may or may not have fed the bread to the cat.

She found it decidedly less hilarious when they pulled up outside her house, and Raven was one step and a gentle tug away from getting another one of those roller-coaster kisses, when Lexa came thundering down the boardwalk and tumbled into view, brandishing what looked suspiciously like a sword, and being chased by something that looked suspiciously like an angry lion. With two heads.

In one smooth motion, Anya pushed Raven behind her, and yanked a knife out of the waistband of her shorts. Raven tried to keep her eyes on the two-headed lion, and not Anya’s waistband, but maybe her eyes slipped.

“ _Ai fragon._ ” Lexa growled.

“ _Sha. Gyon au lesad!_ ” Anya replied, then lunged forwards, rolled under a slashing paw, and danced backwards, as Lexa moved to the left, standing behind the creature, whose sole attention was one Anya.

How the hell Lexa managed to kill it, Raven would never know. The brunette had a silent snarl plastered on her face, and a very shiny, sharp sword in her hand, and feet that moved slightly too fast to be human. Maybe she made it spin and slice its own throat with its momentum, maybe she spun past, hair flying and slit it herself. Who knew? Not Raven, that’s for sure.

“ _Yu gonplei ste odon._ ” Lexa said softly, watching the beast crumble into ash.

“You have thirty seconds to explain before I either scream or pass out, I’m still deciding.”

~~~

“You’re fae. You come from a different world, you can do magic, and the thing you just killed was a...a...”

“ _Graungrifin_.” Lexa supplied helpfully, “although that one appeared to have been one of the _tumelon_ variety. Very rare, very...very...lacking in intellect, and venomous.”

“Lexa, maybe you should go find Clarke and ask her about where we can go get you some clothes, I’m sick of you wearing mine. Here, take this.” Anya suggested in a tone of voice that clearly stated that it was not a suggestion, and held out her wallet.

“ _Fisa-gada?_ ”

“ _Sha._ ”

Lexa nodded, and left quietly.

“ _Graungrifin._ Ground griffin?”

“Yes. I understand that this is hard to understand, but please, it is important that no one else hears about this.”

“Say my name.” Raven demanded.

“What?”

“In your language, say my name.”

“ _Reivon_.” Anya said quietly.

“And your name?”

“ _Onya._ ”

~~~

Anya spent the rest of the day trying to answer Raven’s never ending supply of questions about where she came from, her language, what other creatures were there, what kind of magic is real, are all the carved animals real, is the cat really a cat, or is it a baby _graungrifin_.

Raven spent the rest of the day trying to learn as many swearwords and insults as she possibly could, whilst trying to disguise that fact by bombarding her teacher with other, childish questions. So what if she gravitated closer to Anya on the couch, and so what if her knee knocked against hers every now and then. Raven Reyes was a genius, and she was going to figure out this damn puzzle of a crush, even if she had to pick her apart piece by piece with a particle separator.

Lexa came back with Clarke sometime in the afternoon, carrying a few shopping bags, and something that smelled suspiciously like Thai take-out. Anya and Raven hastily vacated themselves, Anya because she claimed that the noise of the microwave bugged her, and Raven because she’d seen Clarke try and operate in a kitchen before. The ceiling in the Griffin house still had scorch marks on it.

~~~

Raven was miserable. Not because she was being ignored again, no, in fact Anya was sitting on her porch railing drinking a glass of water and tossing knives at the fence. She called it _added security_ , whilst Raven called it _fucking hot, so please don’t stop_.

Raven was miserable because Granny Callie had whacked her over the head with a newspaper for avoiding their Tuesday meetings, and then taken the mickey out of her for not realising what Anya was sooner.

~~~

“It’s almost as though you didn’t listen to _any_ of the stories I told you as a child.” She’d flapped.

“Wait, so you’re also a- _ow!_ ”

Granny Callie had swiped at her with the newspaper again. Raven was certain she was going to bruise. Was it even possible to bruise on the top of your head? Would her hair change colour? (The answer was no, it wouldn’t, but Raven only found that out later).

~~~

“Stop sulking, it was a newspaper.”

“Do you want to go and get hit by an old lady with a newspaper and youthful strength? I think not. She was probably in the army at some point, because there is no logical explanation for how a senior citizen can possibly be that strong.” Raven snapped.

“There’s a perfectly logical explanation, Raven.”

“Do please elaborate, great high and mighty fairy. I asked, and she’s not one of you, so unless you can have little hob-goblin kids I really don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Raven, I am not some winged elf.”

Raven didn’t feel particularly inclined to argue with the mythical creature holding a throwing knife, so she didn’t. But she wouldn’t dare say that she hadn’t held that exact argument in her head that night as she grumbled into her cup of tea.

And she wouldn’t say that she may or may not have thought about that whiskey-fuelled moment that had changed everything, once again.

She certainly wouldn’t say that maybe, just maybe, this time the change was looking like a nice one.

~~~

“I’m telling you, they’re sleeping together.” Octavia commented, watching Clarke squeal and practically jump into Lexa’s arms, presumably because something, presumably Anya, had touched her foot underwater.

Raven raised one eyebrow at the couple, then turned her attention back to her book. Spending time at the cove had become very social, and Raven was still deciding whether or not she enjoyed it or not.

 Anya had vanished into the water within two minutes of their arrival, her backpack sitting unattended under the shade of a very crooked tree. It wasn’t worth trying to search it, because it was locked with something other than your everyday padlock. Raven knew this, because she’d already tried to open it.

Clarke and Lexa were splashing around like the lovebirds they really were. Octavia claimed that Lexa was an alien who learned other languages by touching some part of the native creature’s tongue with their own, just like that one in Supergirl, because honestly, there was no other explanation for the girl’s sudden grasp of the English language.

Raven didn’t have the heart, or shits to give, to tell her that Lexa had spent the first week in their world reading the dictionary, and watching politics on Anya’s laptop.

She also didn’t have the permission to tell her best friend that she was dating a fae from the fae kingdom, which, by the way, she still didn’t totally believe in.

Raven also didn’t have the foggiest idea which one of the idiots had decided that they should totally camp in the cove all together. She literally lived a ten minute walk away, surely she could just sleep in her nice, comfortable bed, in her nice, mosquito free room, away from the ridiculously attractive, incredibly annoying blonde who had been selected to share a tent with her, because Clarke and Lexa were definitely banging.

In all honesty, Raven wasn’t even reading the book she’d stolen off of Anya’s shelf, because not only could she not read the language it was written in, but also because the words kept moving around the page and being generally unruly.

She was busy thinking. Thinking about lunch, and when it was going to happen, because she was starving. She was thinking about how the fuck sleeping in a tent with the woman who had kissed her was supposed to be conducive to actually _sleeping_. She was thinking about how she was going to pick up the ball that Anya had rolled onto her side of the court, and throw it into that smug face of hers. And maybe, _just maybe_ she was thinking about the taste of burnt honey.

She was also keeping an eye on the water, where Anya had vanished more than half an hour ago, and had yet to reappear. She wasn’t worried, of course, and in fact, a small part of her was still hoping that the blonde had drowned, or at least been bitten by a shark, but she didn’t really feel like asking Lincoln for help pitching their tent.

Oh wait, she couldn’t even do that, because _Anya_ had the tent, _in her magically locked backpack_. The only things that Raven had access to, were her books, her clothes, her bottle of whiskey, and Anya’s stupid purple water canister. Octavia was hoarding all the food, Lincoln had pitched he and Octavia’s tent, Lexa had pitched the one she was sharing with Clarke, and Anya had gone for a swim.

Fuck a small part, Raven was really hoping that Anya had drowned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this a new chapter? Yes.  
> Am I a terrible person for updating this one before my other one? Probably.  
> Do you want to come and yell at me for it? Go ahead, my username on tumblr is the same as this one. (please don't yell, I'm a small mice and I frighten easily. Yell, but quietly, y'know, no caps)  
> Do you want trig translations? I don't know. Tell me?


	3. Chapter 3

Camping, in Raven’s opinion was a hellish idea, and whomever had thought of it deserved to have his tongue cut out, his leg hit by a car, set incorrectly, and then rebroken, then hung by the neck above a pool of supersized piranhas, whilst his clothes were set on fire. Oh, and his baby toes were repetitively smashed into table legs. Yes. That was a suitable method of torture.

Camping with Anya, was an entirely different thing. First of all, she stared at the flimsy mess of poles and fabric, scowled, packed it all back up, and deposited it in Clarke’s tent. Then she proceeded to pull her bed from home out of her backpack.

Anya didn’t sleep in a bed, she slept in a hammock. She strung hers up at the edge of the tree line, then another for Raven (how in all hell she managed to fit two hammocks in her tiny backpack, Raven didn’t know), before setting up a mosquito net over them both. Raven was sceptical to begin with, but then realised that the blonde was a genius.

It was sweltering that night, which made the other two couples open up all available flaps to their tents. That resulted in a moderate to non-existent breeze. Still too hot, all four of them piled out, onto the sand. That resulted in mosquitoes, and sandy underwear.

So whilst Lincoln, Octavia, Clarke, and _not_ Lexa, because she was apparently mosquito resistant, were grouchy and itchy the next morning, Raven and Anya were as happy as one coffee dependent mechanic, and one cynical bitch could be.

Raven even began to understand why Anya slept in a hammock instead of a bed, although she felt distinctly seasick when the breeze grew a bit too strong for her liking. It had all the comfort of a bed, as well as the added bonus of a built in cooling system. There were no crumbs in the sheets, and the gentle rocking was soothing.

Raven teased her best friends for a week afterwards about their excellent ape impersonations. Octavia responded by explicitly telling Raven _exactly_ what she could go and do next time she felt the urge to tease someone about their mosquito bites.

~~~

Raven and Anya got caught midway through November. Anya had finally gotten sick and tired of Raven’s diet consisting of peanut butter, coffee, and whiskey, and had dragged her out to buy food. That of course led to Anya helping Raven carry her new fishbowl (minus a fish) as well as various other crap that Raven had insisted on. A five season box set of Friends was a need, especially when it was the only one in stock, and Raven got to watch Octavia scowl at her for taking it.

Anya helping carry, of course led to Raven standing on tiptoes to give her a kiss, because honestly, watching the blonde frown at her empty fishbowl was rather adorable. _That_ of course led to Raven pressed against the fridge whilst-

Yeah, not the point. The point was, that they may or may not have been jammed together on the couch, with their hands _way_ out of the safe zone (Raven had found heaven in the form of abs)when Clarke and Lexa walked in.

Lexa had made a strangled noise and dived back outside, whilst Clarke had shot Raven a thumbs up before following. Raven had started laughing, whilst Anya had stood up, told Raven to get a lock, retrieved her shirt, and left.

Lexa fled every time the blonde walked into a room for the next week, whilst Clarke refused to sit on Raven’s couch for a month. That was rich coming from her, because Raven had totally walked in on her and Niylah _on the kitchen table_. So what if her and Anya got a bit handsy on the couch?  At least they hadn’t been-yeah, Raven preferred not to think about one of her best friends sexual endeavours.

The real issue had appeared when they walked into the shop together (Raven’s jar of peanut butter had run out, and Anya needed to buy a new kite, because apparently hers had gotten shredded on some trees. Raven pretended not to notice the tooth lodged in the cross bar) and Octavia’s eyes had lit up like a Christmas tree.

“ _Raven and Anya, sittin’ in a tree. B-A-N-G-I-N-argghh_.”

Anya may, or may not have reached over the counter and grabbed the tiny girl by the collar whilst Raven was distracted by a particularly interesting looking puzzle. Hearing her friend yelp, Raven had turned, and Anya had quickly dropped Octavia.

Octavia joined Lexa in her hasty escapes for a few days after that, both of them slinking out of the room as soon as they saw gleaming golden eyes come around a corner. They reminded Raven of cats.

Perhaps Anya’s cat had traded personalities with them, because the fucker now had the audacity to stand outside Raven’s door and meow until she let him in.

Anya never really apologised, but she had brought Octavia a fish, so in some way, Raven and Octavia reckoned that that was her way of saying sorry.

“I bet you she’s a cat shape shifter.” Octavia had said, staring at the dead tuna lying on her till counter. Raven didn’t even know how the fuck Anya had caught the tuna, because according to Google, tuna were deep sea creatures, and Anya didn’t own any form of boat other than her plastic kiddie pool.

Still, Octavia was touched at the gesture. She also started hanging crosses, lavender and garlic all over her house in case Anya decided that she was next. Lincoln told her that she was being ridiculous, and wound up sleeping on Clarke’s couch for two days, before Octavia came screeching in at four in the morning because there was a spider in the bathtub, and she needed him to remove it.

~~~

One day, well, Christmas day to be precise, Anya knocked at Raven’s door, her eyes twinkling happily.

“Who did you hex?” Raven asked, stepping out of the blonde’s way. Anya hadn’t even bothered with a response, and merely hung up her heavy coat on the hook, toeing off her shoes, and placing them outside, before marching into the kitchen and emptying the assorted pens out of Raven’s fishbowl. Anya never wore shoes inside houses, and she always hung up her coat to prevent the inevitable melt water from spreading throughout the building.

“Hey!” Raven protested, catching a few of the pens as they started to roll of the table. Anya filled the bowl under the tap, dropped a few handfuls worth of sand into it, then spat some strange, glowing creature, and a mouthful of seawater into it.

“What the fuck Anya, you can’t just go around carrying fish in your mouth!”

“I didn’t have anything else on me to put it in.”

“Still! You don’t just-is that thing _glowing_?”

“That _thing_ is a _blidenswima_.”

“Light fish? Really?” Raven asked, her face so close to the glass that she could see every tiny antenna on the strange thing. Its body seemed to be vaguely shrimplike, with long silken fins that gleamed and glowed a soft aquamarine. It moved slightly like an octopus, fins dancing through the water.

It didn’t seem particularly panicked about the fact that it had just travelled in someone’s mouth, and then been spat into a bowl of tap water, and tapped silently at the glass, exploring. It looked like something straight out of Avatar, all ethereal and glowing, and probably housing the souls of the ancients or something.

“You said you hadn’t been sleeping well. Maybe a light will help.”

“I’d kiss you, but you just had a fish in your mouth.” Raven sniped, mesmerised by the slow swirling lights. She didn’t pay that much attention to Anya, who casually vanished into Raven’s bathroom, then reappeared a minute later, wiping her mouth.

Raven hoped that the ancestors wouldn’t mind the PG16 show that followed.

~~~

The light did help. At first, Raven left it in the kitchen, and a dim glow would light up her home at night. She no longer tripped over anything when she rushed to open the front door and check that there was no one on the beach. That there was no tall figure lying in the waves, being pushed up and down the beach like a piece of driftwood.

She got sick doing that in the middle of December, but she didn’t care. On the days where she couldn’t see the beach, she grabbed her crutches and a head torch, and physically went down to go and check. Was it reckless hobbling down an iced-over boardwalk in the dark on crutches? Yes. Did she fall? Quite a few times.

It was on one of those trips where she bumped into Anya, who frowned slightly, then staggered a step or two backwards when Raven slammed into her, desperately clutching the fur collar of her coat. The coat was dry. The coat was dry; Anya wasn’t dead, washed up on the beach.

She barely had the will to protest when Anya picked her up with ease, her crutches clattering to the floor, and carried her back to her house, carefully putting her down on the couch, before walking back outside to fetch her crutches.

Raven didn’t really mind when Anya stayed the night, somehow managing to curl up enough to fit on the couch. She wouldn’t have minded if Anya had shared her bed, to be completely honest, she had asked, but Anya had smirked, and shaken her head.

Maybe Raven actually slept through the rest of the night once she regained feeling in her toes, and maybe Anya had actually stayed, and was found in the morning curled up under Raven’s grey blanket, and maybe Raven found that her heart beat slightly faster at the sight.

That happened twice more, and Raven clung to Anya just as tightly, if not more so each time, burying her face in the warm fur of the coat. When asked, Anya said that she arrived with the coat, that it was from the Fae World. It was long, and stopped just short of the floor, despite the fact that Anya was taller than the average person, and seemed to be made out of some kind of soft leather, and lined with soft tan fur, from some animal. The pockets seemed innumerable, stuffed with all manner of things.

When asked about the reason that she was patrolling the beach at night, she didn’t answer. When she asked Raven why she couldn’t sleep, Raven didn’t answer, and instead picked at her slice of French toast.

Anya then transferred the fish to Raven’s bedroom, and that seemed to help for a few days. Then the nightmares came back with a vengeance, and Raven went to spend a few nights at Clarke’s house, in hopes that the sound of the sea would be softer there, and the nightmares would stop. They didn’t. She also got a slight crick in her neck from sleeping on the couch.

She tried the same at Octavia, who lived at the base of the mountains in the house closest to Granny Callie’s. She got a week of sleep, and then they came back. And Raven couldn’t even hobble down to the beach to check that no one had drowned, so Lincoln found her every morning curled up under the kitchen counter, staring at the floor, eyes plastered open, afraid to even blink for the fear of seeing the dark water, water like oil rising up, up, up, creeping over those perfect cheekbones, over her gleaming eyes, her eyebrows, her hair, and then the water would be still. And Anya would be gone.

She explained the problem (carefully leaving out the fact that the person in her nightmares was Anya) to Granny Callie, before requesting sanctuary, and Granny Callie had looked at her for a long moment. Then she asked Raven that if she wasn’t going to tell her the whole story, then what was the point at all? Ever the cryptic old lady who lived in the mountains, she also bade Raven farewell with a cheery _talk to her, then come back and ask me the same question again_.

Raven threw a stick at Murphy as she passed him on his way home for the night. It made her feel better.

~~~

Okay, so maybe Raven wasn’t the best at communication, or sleep apparently, but she had a plan. Yep, she had a well thought out plan, that she would execute, as of her arrival back home. The plan was, make a cup of coffee, march (or limp, because her knee with being a pain) up to Anya’s and demand an explanation. For what, Raven wasn’t too sure, but Granny Callie had recommended speaking to her for answers.

Raven didn’t execute her plan, because she walked through her front door to find Anya curled up on the floor of the kitchen with her blanket. Not _her_ blanket, it was actually _Raven’s_ blanket, but Anya had taken to using it when she slept on the couch.

“Anya?” Raven called softly.

The pile of legs on the floor shot up like a cannonball. Anya blinked once, twice, smiled for a split-second, and then her face twisted in anger.

“Where the _hell_ were you?”

“What? I was-“

“You leave, no note, no warning, you leave your crutches in the cupboard, your clothes and car are still here, and you come back _two weeks_ later?”

 Raven had never pegged Anya as an angry-arm-waver. She wasn’t, not really, but her hands did twitch slightly, and Raven was studying the tricky subject of Anya’s Body Language, and her interpretation was that Anya was an angry-arm-waver.

“Anya-“

“Two weeks _Reivon!_ I didn’t know where you’d gone, or what happened to you. You can’t just _do_ things like that!”

“I’m sorry, I-“

“I thought you were dead. _Reivon, ai fir raun._ ” Anya whispered, her hands ghosting up Raven’s arms, as though afraid if she applied pressure, Raven would vanish like a handful of smoke. It was strange seeing the usually aloof blonde Xena clone seem so...so... _human_.  It was a new kind of gentleness.

Not that Anya was cruel, or rough with Raven, no. Quite the opposite, in fact. On the few occasions (five, Raven had been counting) that they actually managed to kiss without someone walking in on them, Anya had been...not soft, but softer than what people might assume she’d be.

~~~

She didn’t treat Raven as though she was made of glass, but if she got no reaction, or Raven pushed on her gently, she drew away immediately, stepping out of Raven’s space. Most of the time, it was because something (the table) was digging into Raven’s back (stupid table) and when explained to the blonde, she’d smirked, and lifted the mechanic with ease, plonking her gently on top of the offending surface. Raven couldn’t wait for summer to roll around again, because quite frankly, she missed seeing Anya’s biceps, and the tattoo that washed over her collarbones.

Raven both loved and hated that stupid table. She loved it, because sitting on top of it gave her that little bit of extra height, and she hated it, because she always managed to get trapped between the corner and Anya’s torso. Raven was pretty sure that Anya’s stomach was harder than the granite counter.

~~~

Anya was usually rather gentle with Raven, but standing there, in Raven’s kitchen, with both her hands tracing patterns on Raven’s bare arms, she was downright _tender_. For once, her face showed more emotion than a brick wall, her eyes glowed slightly.

“Are you going to continue to yell at me, or are you going to kiss me?”

“Yell.” She responded without missing a beat, “I’m going to yell, and then I’m going to steal your crutches and brace and car, and _all_ your shoes if you even _think_ about doing that again. I thought you were dead Raven. I waited on the beach for you, and you didn’t come. I thought maybe you were sick, so I came here, and everything was still here. Everything except you. So I thought maybe you’d gone out with Octavia. I came back in the evening, and you still weren’t back. Octavia said she hadn’t seen you.

Raven, please understand, I’m not going to force you to stay anywhere, but please, _tell me_. Selene vanished one evening, and she was gone for two days. I didn’t think anything of it until I saw the police dragging her body out the water.”

“I see you drowning. Every night, I see you walk into the water, and no matter what I do, you don’t come out. I can yell, I can scream, but I can’t move. The water just gets higher and higher, and then you’re gone.” Raven blurted, “You’re gone, and I couldn’t do anything about it. That’s why I can’t sleep.”

~~~

Anya had headed for the couch, but Raven had pulled back the covers, and rolled over, leaving more than enough room. Anya had checked, and then double checked that she was sure, and even then, she lay down on the furthest possible patch of mattress that she could.

“My hands have literally been under your shirt, and you’re going to do a driftwood impersonation at the edge of my bed. You’re going to fall, and I’m going to laugh.” Raven told Anya’s worn T-shirt covered back.

Anya rolled over, crossed her arms over her chest and bade Raven a good night. Anya would never admit to how Raven had ended up curled up under her chin, one hand clutching a handful of sweet smelling shirt, the other tangled with warm fingers, nor how her arms wound up gently wrapped around the sleeping mechanic, and Raven would never admit that she loved it. She woke up, nuzzled closer to Anya’s neck, blonde hair tickling her cheeks, smiled against warm skin, and went back to sleep. She didn’t see twin golden lights blink into life slowly, stare at her for a few moments, then close again.

She was woken up again when Anya moved, stretching herself out like a cat, before rolling out of Raven’s bed. The light from her fish (Raven really needed to name the thing) was still the brightest light both indoors and out.

“Where you going?” Raven grumbled, burying her face in Anya’s recently vacated pillow. Wood smoke, clove and a mountain breeze. Three smells that should never have smelled so good together, but somehow did.

“Home, before Lexa finds something else to tease me about.” Anya smiled quickly, buttoning up her coat.

“Lexa, teasing you?”

“Unfortunately for me, that little shit is _very_ mouthy, and lucky for her, she happens to be slightly faster than me over short distances. Don’t worry, I’ll catch her before she reaches Clarke.”

And apparently, Anya did, because half an hour later, Raven looked out her window to see a grim-faced Anya marching along the boardwalk, dragging Lexa by the collar. Gods, why did she care so much about some stupid blonde soldier?

~~~

“Remind me why I’m lying across some spiky ass rocks with my head in the water?” Raven asked.

“Shh. You’re helping me.” Anya mumbled, standing on a rock close to Raven’s head, her golden eyes fixed on the water. The shorts were back, winter was over, and Raven was enjoying the view. Anya was indeed built like a Greek god. Lincoln may have been bigger than her, but Anya effortlessly beat him when they got into an argument.

“Y’know if you needed me in a bikini to motivate you, you could just take a picture like everyone else.”

“You’re not motivation Raven, you’re bait, now keep still.”

“I’m _what?_ ” Raven squeaked, lifting her head to glare at the antagonist.

“I said _keep still_.”

“Bait for _what_ exactly?”

“A dragon. Now keep still.”

“ _A what?_ ” Raven yelped, sitting up.

“ _Joken skrish Reivon!_ ” Anya yelled, taking a wild leap into the water and landing with a huge splash. Seconds later, she resurfaced, holding some strange wriggling blue thing. It was almost transparent, and looked like an octopus. There was obviously more of it underwater, because Anya yelped, and dove again.

Raven grew worried, and was about to jump in after her, when she exploded out the water barely a meter away, clutching the wriggling monster. It looked like Nessie wearing fairy wings. Lots of fairy wings. It had a vaguely equine head, with two horns sweeping back, and up, with two flared fins on either side of its face that Raven originally thought were ears. It had two sets of wings, a larger pair in front, just before its front legs, and two slightly smaller set in front of its hind legs. Another four fins were set on either side of its tail. She vaguely remembered seeing something similar carved out of wood on Anya’s windowsill, next to three other dragons.

“Hold this for a moment, would you?” Anya asked, holding the dragon up, “the little shit bit me.”

~~~

“Whaddya mean you haven’t slept together yet?” Octavia yelped, glaring in mock horror at a blushing Clarke.

“Exactly that O. She’s new here, her family was super religious, and she just learned English, I don’t want to force her into anything she doesn’t want to do.” Clarke said primly.

“Also known as, Lexa sucks at taking hints.” Raven added helpfully.

“Oh my god, yes. Jesus Rae, She’d like a puppy sometimes.” The blonde groaned, burrowing further into a scarf that Lexa had left at her house.

“A cute puppy.” Octavia chimed in.

“The cutest. She does this thing when she doesn’t understand what I’ve said, where she just tilts her head and frowns like I just took away her favourite book. And that’s another thing that’s adorable. She’s always reading, and when she doesn’t understand a word, she underlines it, looks it up, and writes a translation in the margin for the next person.” Clarke gushed. Clearly Lexa’s consideration for the next unfortunate soul to attempt to read To Kill A Mockingbird struck a chord in the blonde.

“Griffin, you’re so whipped, it’s sickening.”

The three musketeers of Arkadia were doing their usual games night, which involved more alcohol and chatting than games, but games night sounded cooler. It usually took place at Clarke’s house, because a) it was the biggest, b) Octavia lived with Lincoln , and he wasn’t invited, c) Raven only had two couches, and her electricity was dicey, and d) Clarke always had the best booze.

“Okay, let’s stop picking on the host for a moment, and target the mechanic. How’s tall, blonde, and intimidating doing, Raven?”

“Huh?”

“Oh _come on_ , you two haven’t fucked either?”

Both Clarke and Raven pelted the tiny girl with pillows for that comment. Octavia screeched, giggled and gave as good as she got. The three girls fell asleep in a pile on the fluffy rug on Clarke’s living room floor, and regretted it immensely the next day, after being woken up by their respective people.

Lincoln woke Octavia up when he lifted her up off the floor, whereupon she giggled weakly, cuddled closer to his broad chest, and went back to sleep. He smiled at her, shrugged at Lexa’s questioning look, and walked out, presumably to take the sleeping brunette home.

Lexa crouched down next to Clarke and gently shook her awake, before helping her to her bedroom to sleep off the hangover.

Raven had woken up when the three fae had walked through Clarke’s front door, and watched the proceedings with half her face buried in a blanket. Anya wordlessly helped her to her feet, handed her a disposable cup of coffee and an aspirin, and walked her out to the car, which Anya’d driven over. Raven fell asleep in the passenger seat, and woke up in her bed, the curtains pulled closed, the fish glowing dimly, and her blankets pulled up to her chin.

 

~~~

Raven didn’t know what was more annoying. The fact that, despite her telling the blonde that she had nightmares about her drowning, she still swam, every damn day, or the fact that to counter the nightmares, she stayed almost every night.

 _Reivon, I can’t just stop. We’re so close._ Anya had said when Raven had brought up the topic in that still moment before the sun rises. As much as Raven wanted to argue with her, she did have a valid point, even though Raven didn’t quite know what she was so close to. The note of desperation in her usually steady voice was enough to convince the mechanic.

Sure, she was annoyingly vague with information about her home, but Raven could understand Anya fluently enough. She’d been away from her home for a long time, in fact, she’d fled as a refugee. There had been some kind of political coup, involving Lexa, and so by association, Anya.

They’d planned to meet up by the gateway, and cross through together with assorted allies, including Selene, Anya’s girlfriend of the time, but they’d been attacked on their way there. Anya had shoved Selene through the gate, and stayed behind as long as possible, giving Lexa and the other allies a chance to flee, either back into the forest, or through the gateway.

She claimed that Granny Callie had been Selene’s aunt, married to Eric, a fae man. Raven found that easily enough to believe when she found a gravestone with only a name, and some kind of crest in the town cemetery. The scars on her hip had come from some kind of monster, and had nearly killed her. She’d had to relearn how to walk.

On the whole, Anya was still annoyingly vague about the whole _difference between fae and humans_ thing, but Raven was confident that a few more months of badgering, and the blonde would spill.

It shocked her one day, as she shuffled along the beach with a cursory reminder to a grinning Anya that she was going to get eaten by one of her water dragons, and that it was still a No Swimming beach, that she’d known the woman (elf? Fae?) for a year.

~~~

 Raven figured out the difference between fae and humans soon enough. _Soon_ meaning, it didn’t take another year, in fact, it only took a few months. They were back in the cove for another one of their campouts, which had started out with six, and ended up with two, when Octavia physically couldn’t keep her hands off of Lincoln after a few drinks, and they’d left to wolf whistles. Clarke and Lexa had made some lame excuse about Clarke leaving the stove on, and followed.

That left one mechanic, one sociopath, a bonfire, and a rather large amount of alcohol, alone in a small cove. It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke. Or a porn film, Raven couldn’t entirely care.

They drank a lot, that much was certain. They orbited around the campfire, until they were next to each other, staring at the black expanse of the ocean. Raven was leaning against Anya’s backpack, whilst Anya reclined gracefully on an elbow, her free hand holding a bottle of whiskey.

Her eyes gleamed even brighter than usual in the flickering light from the fire, and she seemed...relaxed. She was lounging like a cat, one leg was crooked, she swigged from her bottle every now and then, and small smiles and fleeting laughs flashed across her face with ease.

And then Raven’s night was made. Anya sneezed. It was a rather adorable sneeze, her nose scrunched up before, and afterwards, she shut her eyes and shook her head as though a few of her brain cells had been shaken loose. Oh yeah, she also snorted fire.

Raven was too drunk to be scared, so she just started laughing. Laughing at the fact that she was sitting on a beach at eleven forty, around a bonfire, drinking whiskey with a stunning blonde, who was in fact a magical creature from a magical realm, who just happened to be into girls, and Raven just happened to be a girl, and the girl who liked girls had just drunkenly sneezed fire.

Anya stared at her for a few moments, before the corners of her mouth twitched, and she distracted herself with a sip of whiskey.

“I just found out your magic power. You’re a dragon shape shifter.” Raven said in glee. Finally, she could prove Octavia wrong. She could just imagine O’s face when she proudly showed off her fire-breathing...person? neighbour? Were they dating? Not officially, but-

Anya spat out her mouthful of whiskey, straight into the fire, which roared higher as it burned off the alcohol, and laughed. She laughed and she laughed, and for a moment Raven was afraid that she’d broken her.

“Raven, quite frankly, that’s offensive.” She said, once she’d calmed down.

After an Anya style explanation, which meant the bare minimum delivered with a ratio of 10:1 of cynical sarcasm to usefulness, and a few questions Raven had figured out several things.

  1. Magic was based on the four elements.
  2. Opposing elements could not have children.
  3. Anya’s mother had been a fire power.
  4. Her father, who vanished before she was born had been an earth power.
  5. You could learn to manipulate other elements if the person you loved could.
  6. Via that loophole, Anya learned air and water from Selene.
  7. Raven really, really needed to get Anya drunk more often.



Raven demanded to see more magic, preferably the flammable variety, so Anya grudgingly summoned up a few butterflies, with fluttered over the campfire, and then with a sidelong look at Raven’s face, added a few flowers for the butterflies to land on. Show off.

“How drunk are you?” Raven whispered, her eyes fixed on Anya’s face, watching the shadows play over her features.

“Sober enough.” Anya responded, digging a small hole in the soft sand for her bottle to rest in.

“Enough for what?” Raven didn’t notice the butterflies spluttering out of existence, one by one.

“To remember this.”

Raven really, really loved the taste of burnt honey and whiskey.


	4. Chapter 4

“You’re going _where?_ ” Raven yelped, kneeing Anya in the face as she angrily yanked her legs off her lap.

Anya casually checked that all of her teeth were still in place, before taking a deep breath, “I’m going on a boat trip Raven, not to Russia.”

“You’ve been to Russia, haven’t you?” Raven sighed

“Four years in the army, but that’s beside the point. I’m going on a boat trip. Something big came through the gateway, and it’s probably another water dragon.”

“Your mouth is bleeding.” Raven said in surprise. She’d half expected Anya to not even _have_ blood. Or maybe, at least, not red blood. Golden blood probably, like the Greek gods or something. It was a strangely _human_ thing to see.

“You _literally_ just slammed your kneecap into my mouth Raven, what did you expect?”

“My kneecap to break. Your bones were carved from solid granite, and your heart from ice.”

Anya levelled a glare in her general direction as she wiped her mouth, looking at the blood on her hand in disgust.

“Go get a tissue if you’re so anti-blood.” Raven sighed, flopping back on the couch, “God only knows how you deal with your period.”

“My what?”

“Your period?”

“My time? _Jok!_ ” Anya damn near _squeaked_ as Raven repeated her actions.

“Don’t tell me you don’t get your period.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Anya grumbled, holding the bottom of her tank top to her mouth.

“I’m not talking to you anymore.” Raven huffed, rolling onto her stomach, an impressive feat, considering the fact that she was on a couch, and kicking Anya in the face again. On purpose this time.

~~~

Raven was speaking to Anya again by the time the sun started to dip into the waves, as they made their way along to beach to barbeque at Octavia’s house. Anya was wearing one of Raven’s shirts, because Clarke and Lexa had claimed the cliff house for the evening, and Raven didn’t want to walk in on anything. Of course, the second Anya had pulled on the damn thing, Raven had pulled it straight back off, and backed the taller girl into the closet door. That resulted in them running late, but Raven honestly couldn’t care.

They met up with a flustered Clarke and aloof Lexa on Octavia’s driveway. Raven stared pointedly at Lexa’s neck until Clarke noticed, blushed, and hastily adjusted Lexa’s collar, hiding the perfectly shaped purple mark on the smooth skin. Lexa had looked down, then given Clarke a curious look, her head tilting to the side, like a lost puppy. Either she hadn’t been aware of the bruise, or she hadn’t thought to cover it.

Raven saved the information to tease Clarke about later.

~~~

Raven honestly couldn’t say why she was up before the sun. She rolled over, seeking the warmth of the fire elf that sometimes spent the night, but it was absent. Grumbling, the mechanic rolled the rest of her way out of bed, somehow landing on her good leg. Anya wasn’t in the kitchen either, nor was she curled up on the couch.

Her clothes and shoes were gone, but a steaming mug of coffee was waiting for Raven on the counter top. Still, Raven wanted to know where her space heater had decided to wander off to at the ass crack of dawn, so she went on a mission.

After a long, treacherous journey up the smooth planks, Raven froze behind a particularly large bush. What kind, she didn’t know. She and Octavia had done a study of the plants on the cliff for one of their bio projects, but could find no information on them. The closest they got was some kind of whack ass collection of shrubs native to one specific area in South Africa.

An irregular level of sharp wooden _clacks_ was rising up into the morning air, melding with the early morning mist. Had anyone else been up on the boardwalks, they would have started to believe that there were indeed ghosts up on the winding trails on the cliff, and they’d have fled back to the safety of the town to spread the news.

However, Raven was not anyone else, so Raven peered around the thick foliage of her chosen hiding place, praying that there wasn’t another lion waiting for her on the other side. There wasn’t a lion. There was something even more dangerous. Anya’s abs.

Dressed in nothing but a pair of dark pants (possibly leather, possibly not) and breast bindings (some kind of bandage wrapped tightly over her chest, and tied neatly at the back) wielding a solid looking wooden staff, was Anya.

Sure, Lexa was wearing much the same, but ever since the Finn fiasco, Raven and Clarke had made a pact to stay away from potentially shared love interests. If asked though, Raven wouldn’t deny the fact that Lexa looked good. It was just..well..Anya looked _better_.

With a yell, Anya attacked Lexa, who barely raised her own staff in time to block to savage downward cut. The contact of wood on wood produced the sharp _clack_ sound, and Lexa spun away from the onslaught, hair flaring behind her.

They moved like cats, bare feet raising tiny clouds of dust, spinning this way and that, sometimes using both hands, sometimes just one, until with a victorious cry, Lexa managed to send Anya’s weapon flying across the patch of dirt until it hit the wooden fence with a decidedly defeated _clonk_. Unperturbed, Anya grabbed Lexa’s hair, and a bit of a tussle later, had the shorter girl on the ground, only held up by her own weapon pinned against her neck.

Raven gaped. Anya caught her eye and grinned, a quick, wicked flashing of sharp teeth. Raven tripped over nothing, and tumbled off the boardwalk, landing in a sweet smelling, yet very dusty, and rather prickly bush. Lexa didn’t seem impressed at being beaten, or at Raven’s extreme grace (or lack thereof). Anya thought it was funny, judging by the upturn of the right side of her mouth.

Raven cheered for Lexa when they picked up their respective weapons. Anya wasn’t smiling afterwards. In fact, Raven almost felt sorry for the green-eyed girl, because Anya looked as though murder in the first degree was forefront in her mind.

~~~

“So...you’re a ninja.” Raven mused from her safe perch on the tall blonde’s shoulders.

Anya had decided that she needed to walk up the bloody mountain, and that the only sure-fire way to do a proper job was to walk through the river. Raven had immediately demanded sanctuary, claiming that her shoes weren’t waterproof. Anya told her to just take them off. Raven reminded Anya that she was abandoning her for two weeks to go on a cruise. Grudgingly, Anya had found a rock for Raven to stand on in order to get enough height to make the ascent to safety.

“I will drop you.” Anya threatened.

“I’ll drown.”

“This river is knee deep, you’ll live.”

“Not everyone is the height of a tree Anya.”

“You’re just abnormally tiny.”

Raven dropped Anya’s boots in the river. Anya dropped Raven in the river. Needless to say, the hike was called, and two sopping wet, grouchy climbers rocked up on Clarke’s doorstep, and promptly took the mickey out of Lexa when she answered the door.

Clarke predicted Raven would be sick for a week. Anya growled, _literally_ , when Clarke tried to tug at her soaking shirt, sending the blonde scurrying for cover. Raven laughed, and brushed off Clarke’s shitty prediction. Raven Reyes, did not get sick.

~~~

“Could you die more quietly please?”

“Shut the fuck up Anya. It’s not fair that you don’t get sick.”

“I offered to dry your clothes.”

“Go to hell.” Raven grumbled, hiding her face against the blonde’s stomach. She was sprawled out on her swing-chair, head on Anya’s lap, whilst the warrior watched the ocean and made tiny trees grow on the porch railing. They were cute trees, although Raven honestly didn’t know what to do with them. Would she have to water them? Did they need fertiliser? Would they get any bigger? They looked like fully grown trees, merely shrunk down to the height of a Tic Tac box.

She was purposefully avoiding looking at the small, plain duffel bag resting just inside the front door. Anya was staying the night, but when Raven woke up, Anya would be gone for two weeks.

They hadn’t really talked about it, and Octavia would have kicked Raven if she knew. Still, talking through issues just wasn’t how they worked. Anya had been uncharacteristically friendlier for a few days, going so far as to fix the leak in Raven’s roof which had been caused by a stray firework a few years before.

“Take care of yourself. No Titanic bullshit.” Raven mumbled into the pillow later that night.

“There are no icebergs here.”

“You know what I mean Riveria.”

“ _Sha_.” Anya sighed, her stare flickering from the ceiling for a brief moment to examine Raven’s face, before returning.

“Why are you even going on a boat trip. Not enough dragons here for you to play with?”

“There’s a particularly large one that’s come through. If I don’t return it to...well...you’ve heard of Nessie, right? And Moby Dick?”

“Those are fictional Anya.”

“I can breathe fire Raven.”

“Fine. Nessie is a water dragon from a magical kingdom. Next thing you’ll be telling me that Bigfoot is just some sort of hairy troll.”

“Don’t be ridiculous Raven. Sleep.”

~~~

Anya was gone when Raven woke up, nothing remaining except the lingering smell of wood smoke and mountain flowers, and a small wooden dragon, standing guard on her bedside table. It wasn’t the same kind of dragon as the type that had nearly drowned the wily blonde, there were no fins, nor soft edges on this one.

It looked more like the stereotypical childhood dragon of flames and teeth than the first dragon, but it had more facial spikes, and teeth. It appeared to be covered in tiny scales, that even in wooden form, were cold to the touch, and the wings seemed tattered, worn thin in some place. It was crouched, teeth bared, wings half flared, doing a startlingly good impersonation of a frightened cat.

 Raven would never admit it, but she kept the tiny wooden creature in her pockets for the entire time that Anya was away.

It slept on her bedside table, patrolling the night with the _blidenswima_ , trying to keep the tides at bay. It watched her eat breakfast, sat on the tool bench when she went to work, perched on the railing of the stoop to watch the waves with her as the sun went down, eyes peeled for a dark shape on the beach, or a boat on the horizon.

The first few nights were okay, the sheets still held that strange smell of smoking vegetation that seemed to sweet, the dragon was company enough for the next few, a silent watch-dog, something to talk to when she woke up with the sheets plastered to her body, trembling with the fear of the crushing weight of the ocean.

This time, she didn’t see the ocean close over Anya’s head. It was as though she _was_ Anya, watching herself watch mutely as the water crept higher and higher, until the world went black, liquid crept into her nose, burnt her throat, filled her lungs. She would wake up coughing, her mouth tasting like salt, that no amount of fresh water, peanut butter, coffee, nor whiskey would ever chase away properly.

She fled to Clarke’s house on the sixth night, covered in sweat, clutching a soft T-shirt and a wooden dragon. A sleepy Clarke answered the door, her blonde curls in imperfect chaos, eyes clouded, shirt rumbled, shorts skew. One glance at Raven, and a blink later, the sleepiness dissolved, and warm arms wrapped her in a hug, gently pulling her inside.

Raven slept curled up to her sister, face hiding in the tear-stained material of her shirt. It was enough to keep the circling nightmares at bay. It wasn’t enough to guarantee a peaceful night.

Clarke was warm, yes, but it was the wrong kind of warm. She didn’t smell bad, but she didn’t smell _right_. Her hair was too soft, not stiffened by salt. Granted, her chest was definitely softer, more pillow-like, but Raven didn’t _want_ a pillow.

She wanted sharp collarbones, and fingers tracing endless patterns over her spine. She wanted to bury her face in the crook of a slender neck, soft lips pressed against her forehead. She wanted long legs tangled with hers, rough scars brushing against her thigh. She wanted the smell of light incense, the taste of burnt honey, sheets twisted and hanging off the bed.

She wanted something that was floating on a boat, miles out to sea. So she passed out with tears still trickling down her face, the soft, childhood embrace keeping her warm and close.

She woke up to the sun illuminating various paintings, the beach, a wave foaming as it broke over Devils Spike, a starfish, resting of a bed of dark green sea weed. A half-finished portrait of green eyes, and a soft smile. Octavia, wearing engine grease on her face, a memory snapshot of the day that she decided to help Raven at work. Raven, wearing a flower crown, a flash back of Clarke’s seventeenth birthday.

Pictures were taped to Clarke’s mirror, as though she was still in high school. The three musketeers, grinning evilly at the camera, holding water pistols, and rocking bikinis, blue, red, and white. A faded Polaroid of her parents kissing on New Year’s Day, an orange firework exploding above their heads.

The musketeers again, this time passed out on the carpet in a pile after Octavia’s twenty first. Raven almost winced at the memory of _that_ hangover. Octavia and Bellamy at the official opening of their shop. Raven’s legs sticking out from under a car.

And there, on the corner, was a new one. A cheesy selfie. Clarke with her chin on Lexa’s shoulder, grinning like a hyena, whilst Lexa looked mildly confused, but happy, her eyes on Clarke’s face instead of the camera.

The two girls spent the day messing around, as they used to do on summer break. Netflix was a huge feature, and then Raven got distracted by a broken clock, and Clarke pulled out her paints, and when the stars started dancing in the sky, they stuck a frozen pizza in the oven, and ate ice-cream whilst watching a horror movie.

Clarke didn’t ask. Raven didn’t tell. They didn’t have to.

When Jake died, Clarke had turned up at Raven’s dorm, and hadn’t left her bed for a week. Raven forced pizza and ramen down her throat, made her change every few days, and held her tightly every night. Don’t ask, don’t tell, because the other already knows.

~~~

“Where’s Lexa? Did something happen between you two?” Raven asked around a mouthful of screwdriver, lying on her back, trying to fix Clarke’s car.

“What? Oh, no. She went with Anya, she said they’d be back as soon as they could.” Clarke replied, gently taking the screwdriver out of Raven’s mouth. It was one of her pet peeves, and she was insistent that one day, Raven was going to lose teeth because she had some kind of tool or another wedged between them.

Raven grunted in response, not trusting her quick-action, automatic fire mouth to not spray out something that Clarke probably did not, or should not, know. After all, Raven Reyes was blunt, and intelligent, in that order. She valued knowledge, yes, but she valued honesty more.

~~~

She stayed at Clarke’s house for the rest of the week, going to sleep in the spare room, but inevitably winding up cuddled against her best friend, terrified of the dark, of water, of dark water rising to extinguish flaming eyes. Clarke didn’t get angry with her, if the soft words and gentle embraces were anything to go by. She started leaving the bathroom light on in hopes of easing the severity of the nightmares. It didn’t really work.

It was ass-o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday, or thereabouts, when she woke up with a yelp, practically punching Clarke in the jaw as she sat up and scrambled for the lights. The blonde groaned softly, raising a hand to check the safety of her teeth.

“Rae?”

“We have to go.” Raven blurted, fingers fumbling with the straps of her brace. Her ears were still ringing with the soft whisper that had woken her.

“What? Where are we going? _Raven!”_

“ _Now_ damn it Clarke! Get moving!”

“What’s going on?”

“We have to go to the beach. Now.”

“ _Why?_ ” Clarke demanded, stopping Raven’s frantic, jerky motions with gentle, but strong hands. There was a smear of dark orange paint on the blonde’s left thumb.

Raven scanned her blue eyes for a few seconds, choosing her words carefully, “Lexa’s hurt. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do.”

“I think you’re absolutely crazy, but I’ll drive. Grab the blankets off the couch and my bag, I’ll bring the car around.” Clarke sighed, pushing her tousled hair out her face, and stumbling out the room.

The drive was short, tense. Clarke’s headlights were the only lights on in town, and they made the trees seem like hands, reaching out, the shadows like oily liquid, smothering everything it touched.

Clarke parked, and Raven tumbled out the car, limping along the sandy path, ignoring the protests from her leg at the sudden strain. Not for the first time, she cursed the existence of beach sand.

Sure enough, just like her nightmares, there was a dark shape lying just in the water, but unlike her nightmares, there were two shapes. And unlike her nightmares, Clarke was with her, and one of the shapes moved when a choked cry forced its way between her lips, the shape slowly sitting up.

Choppy blonde hair framed a sandy, exhausted face in the light from Clarke’s torch. Next to her, Lexa lay motionless in the swash.

~~~

Somehow Anya avoided Clarke’s questioning, though through luck or magic, Raven couldn’t tell. All she knew, was that once again, Lexa was sleeping in the spare room, Anya was doing a pretty good impersonation of a Mama Bear, Clarke was drinking tea, and somehow looking calm, although her movements were slightly too jerky, and Raven was looking forwards to a night of sleep, and then not looking so forward to a huge interrogation.

Clarke took Raven’s bed to get a few hours of sleep, leaving Anya and Raven to pace around the living room (Anya) and stare blankly at the TV (Raven).

“You lied.” She said eventually.

“Yes.” Anya replied, finally halting in her mission to wear through the wooden planks.

“Where were you?”

“I went...back.”

“What happened?”

“We were travelling, and someone recognized me. It took them less than a day to spread the word, and then we got ambushed. Lexa got shot.”

“By a gun?”

“No, an arrow. The _Azgeda,_ Ice Nation specialise in poisons. Thankfully, I had a good teacher, and could create the antidote rather quickly. She’s going to be dizzy for the next week, but she’ll be fine. The worst has passed.”

“Why did you lie?”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Well, I did.”

Anya dropped into a crouch in front of Raven, her golden eyes clear, her face devoid of almost all emotion, “My intention was never to cause you any worry, _Reivon_. Please, believe me when I say this.”

“You left me. You could have _died_ , and you _left!_ ” Raven yelled, shoving Anya’s hands off of her knees, aiming a kick at the woman’s shins for good measure, “I can’t _fucking_ sleep when you’re not here, because I always see you _dying_ , and then you just go somewhere without telling me, somewhere where you could die. What is this? What is this to you Anya? Is it a game? Just another tick on the list of things you’ve done?”

“ _No!_ ” Anya snapped, resuming her pacing. Her back was ramrod straight, tattered white shirt hanging loosely off one shoulder. Scars littered the patches of ribcage that Raven could see, long, short, pale, red, marking the smooth olive skin. A map of scars she thought wryly, or perhaps a time line of sorts.

“What is this then, Anya?” She whispered, drawing her good leg up to her chin in search of comfort, maybe warmth, “Are you going to throw me away?”

Raven doesn’t admit much, but what she does, is that the hug that followed that quiet, desperate question, was without a doubt, one of the warmest hugs she’d ever received. Anya’s arms would never have the muscles of Lincoln, or even Jake, would never be as soft as Clarke’s, nor have as much feeling as Octavia’s, but they were warm. They were warm, and it was almost effortless when she lifted Raven onto her lap, her golden hair tucked under Raven’s chin, face pressed against her chest.

Anya was asking for forgiveness with a bowed head, apologizing with the slump of her strong shoulders, and swearing to never let Raven go with the warmth of the embrace.

~~~

There was an entire flower garden, complete with smooth, flat dirt pathways lined with round stones, growing in Raven’s dirt patch when the sun rose. Yellow roses clambered along the faded white fence, intertwined with soft, orange buds. A strange, blue-flowered shrub, similar in size and shape to lavender sat low on the ground, backing onto taller, greener plants, which had white, star-shaped flowers that smelled sweet.

The dirt looked smooth and worn, as though it had been carefully pressed flat, and the stones were round and pale grey, as though they had been painstakingly fetched from a gully, where the sea would roll them backwards and forwards until they were as smooth and round as an egg.

Anya would never admit to having anything to do with it.

Raven would never admit to carefully watering each and every single plant, regardless of size.

 Raven was curled up on the porch swing, wrapped in the soft grey blanket, her head on the stern blonde’s lap. Whilst the younger girl slept, Anya’s golden eyes tracked the waves, her fingers tracing entire maps over the blanket. Mountain ranges lay on her shoulders, immense forests sprawled over her back, small villages hiding between the thick foliage, names written underneath them in a strange language of circles and lines. Desert sand blew over her hip bone, and a river ran from the mountains to her wrist, where the foamy fingers of the sea washed over her fingers. Anya traced out an entire kingdom on Raven’s body, a kingdom that she hoped one day she could see. A kingdom she hoped to one day be able to take Raven to.

Clarke found them like that, shuffling onto the porch with three mugs of coffee. Anya shot her a cursory glance, and accepted her mug with a sharp nod before returning her gaze to the sea. Clarke sent a strange look at the row of tiny trees growing along the porch railing, small green leaves trembling in the barely-there breeze. Her blonde hair was tousled, both from sleep, and her hands constantly running through it, in hopes of smoothing away more than just wisps of hair. Call it her nervous habit.

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“There’s lots of things I haven’t told you, Clarke.”

“There’s something involving both you and Lexa that you haven’t told me.”

“Clarke, if there is something you wish to know regarding Lexa, you must ask her. It is not my place to tell you things about her that she doesn’t wish for you to know.” Anya sighed, carefully setting the coffee mug on the table.

“She won’t say anything. I don’t want to hurt her Anya, if that’s what you are afraid of, I just want to know her.” Clarke grumbled, taking a hurried sip of the scalding liquid to try and hide the slight waver in her usually strong voice.

“If you want her to trust you, you must first trust her. She will tell you Clarke, but only when she is ready.”

Clarke grunted, and the two of them watched the early morning stillness together, golden eyes on the dancing sapphire waves, blue eyes on the shivering emerald trees.

~~~

Raven had found a new hobby. A pastime, if you will. A distraction, maybe.

Anya sparring.

Her and Lexa, and occasionally Lincoln or Indra would strip down to pants and bindings, choose a staff from the pile on the porch, and stretch quickly before engaging in a friendly game of murder. Sometimes they fought in teams, ganging up on each other as though they were opposing armies, other times, it was kill of be killed.

Anya easily demolished Lincoln, who relied too much on his own strength, struggled a little, but not much against Indra, and was evenly matched against Lexa, although those matches usually ended in five seconds, or lasted a solid half hour.

Her bare feet would raise small dust clouds from the bare ring of dirt that had sprouted up one night in front of her house, legs looking ridiculously long in the worn leather pants, scarred knuckled and sandy hair gleaming in the sun, calloused hands holding the smooth staff in a practiced grip.

With barely a twitch, she could spin the wooden length in almost a complete circle, almost looking like she was dancing a deadly dance. She moved like some kind of cat, but her eyes were sharp like a hawk’s, and she growled like a wolf when she got locked in a match of strength.

Raven had found a new hobby, and by whatever gods there were, she loved it. She’d never understood the fascination with watching other people play sports (watching Octavia play hockey didn’t count, that was for moral support and the free booze) until she’d first stumbled across the fierce exchange of blows between Anya and Lexa.

After that, she was hooked, walking up to Anya’s house every Sunday armed with a notebook, or a book, or a new game on her phone, and watched with fascination. It was a new kind of science to her, some strange form of machinery.

See, Raven liked machines. She liked the way she could take them apart, examine all the little pieces, replace, or mend any damaged ones, put them back together, and watch them work. She enjoyed the satisfying feeling when she rebuilt an engine and it purred like a happy cat at her, she liked knowing how things worked.

People always threw away things that were broken, and Raven liked to put them back together. Yes, they were broken, sure, they might not work properly again, but there was always hope. After all, she had been broken, and thrown away.

All it took was an emergency surgery and a few months of decent food, and she was almost working properly again. So what if she never worked the same again, she still worked in some manner or another. So what if she couldn’t go to space, couldn’t follow her childhood dream, she could build cars. And coffee machines, and clocks, she could repair boats, and build engines and radios from scraps.

Raven used to sit with Clarke when they would study, and try to memorise the human body, after all, it was just another machine, wasn’t it? Blood instead of fuel, organs instead of gears, veins instead of copper wires. People never understood how the engineer could find interest in the living flesh when everything she studied dealt with metal and electricity.

Watching the tall blonde fight, she tried to dissect everything that happened, which muscles allowed her to execute that perfect over head swing, which joints were moving when she executed a speedy twist out of the way of a wild, angry blow from Lincoln that would’ve surely broken her arm had it landed. She watched the different positioning of long fingers on the polished wood, memorising small patterns in her fighting style.

Patterns. Raven loved patterns. Fighting, she discovered, had patterns. Series of moves that worked in tandem. Sure, they might not be executed in the same order every time, but they were grouped together. A step back, a right feint, a left swing, a quick punch to the kidneys, a step forwards. It was a pattern. Fighting held patterns.

Patterns, could be programmed. If this, then that. If that, then this. If patterns could be programmed, and fighting had patterns, then surely fighting could be programmed? Surely, Raven could program something to fight?

She sketched out a humanoid machine, big pistons working in the calves, suspensions in the carefully drawn hands to protect the delicate wiring. She filled an entire notebook with careful drawings, full scale drawings, close ups of joints, different parts she would need to customise, a list of companies that could produce the parts.

She sketched out a mechanical warrior that she knew would never be able to express that fierce kind of joy, that fluid, elegant grace, would never be able to produce that perfect rumbling growl, or raise those tiny nebulae of dust particles.

She sketched out a machine, perfect in every way, and yet she knew she would never be able to replace the blonde hair, striking eyes and olive skin with gears and wires and data chips. Could never replace warm arms with heaters, the smell of wood smoke and wild flowers with candles, or air fresheners. Could never replace the gentle laugh, the glint of sharp teeth, never generate the easy, sarcastic responses to mundane questions and scoldings.

She knew that no matter how hard she tried, she could never replace, or fix Anya, not properly, at least.

She knew all those things, and yet somehow, it didn’t scare her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahahaha I'm a terrible person. Sorry guys.  
> Once again, if there's anything you'd like to say/see, let me know, either here, or on tumblr under the same name.  
> Hope you enjoyed it :)


	5. Chapter 5

“Hey, Ahn?” Raven whispered into the almost darkness, her words flickering through the air with the ripples of blue light from the fish bowl. Her cheek was resting against Anya’s collarbone, her hair sprawled over the blonde’s chest.

Anya hummed sleepily, her fingers still tracing gentle patterns over Raven’s bare thigh, other arm wrapped tightly around the shorter girl’s waist.

She’d practically moved into Raven’s apartment over the course of the year, appearing in the kitchen doorway after Raven trekked home from work, she slept there, and Raven honestly didn’t really know where she went during the day.

Sometimes she came back dusty, with bruised hands and arms, and Raven knew she’d been training, other times she came back smelling of salt, and she knew she’d been swimming, and other times yet, Anya skipped through the front door with various trees littering her tangled hair, meaning that she’d been racing Indra up and down the mountain again.

Sure, her clothes weren’t there, and she still went home to spar with Lexa, or any other unfortunate victim really, and she cleverly made herself scarce when O and Clarke came over, but she had moved in, in other ways.

For starters, Raven’s cupboards no longer only held peanut butter and stale bread. There were jars of honey on the shelves, and onions, and various squash from Anya’s garden rattling around in the drawers. Fresh bread always resided in the bread bin, sometimes plain, sometimes sweet, sometimes dotted with raisins or olives. Raven had a newfound love affair for sweet potatoes, fascinated that something could have purple skin and yellow insides.

Anya, if nothing else, ensured that Raven started eating healthier, producing weird and wonderful combinations of fresh vegetables, starches and meats. Clarke and Lexa started joining them for dinner on some nights, all four of them sitting on mismatched chairs on the porch, or crammed indoors when the weather was shite. Octavia and Lincoln came over at least once a week, and even Indra deigned to join them occasionally, lured out of whatever cave she usually lived in with the promise of a hot meal.

“Will you go home again?”

“I live five minutes away.”

“Not that home. _Home_ home.”

Anya was silent for a while, her fingers stopped tracing, as though they’d forgotten what they were supposed to be doing. Raven almost thought she’d fallen asleep, but her grip around her waist was still slightly too tight for her to have conked out.

“I hope so.”

“When?”

“Soon. Next winter, perhaps.”

“I want to come with you.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“ _Reivon_ , can we not speak about this after we have slept?”

“Are you avoiding this?”

“No, I am tired.”

“Good night Anya.”

“Sweet dreams, little bird.”

~~~

“Raven! Rae!” A loud crash jolted Raven out of a peaceful sleep, followed by obnoxiously heavy footsteps on the floor, “you’ll never believe what- _whoa!_ ”

Octavia froze in the doorway, her storm-cloud eyes bugging out of her head at the sight in front of her. A loud snarl came from Raven’s pillow, and strong arms tried to protect her from any incoming threat.

Raven growled into Anya’s neck, and grudgingly rolled off the space heater to glare at her best friend, “ _What_ , O?”

“There’s a...I managed to... _did she bite you?_ ” Octavia accused, pointing at Anya, who appeared to be transforming into a pitbull, _literally_ snarling at the tiny brunette, her sharp teeth gleaming. Raven half expected fur to be bristling on the back of her neck.

“ _Octavia!_ ”

“You gotta come see what I can do!”

“It’s ass o’clock in the morning, on a _Saturday_ you masochist!”

“So you’ll come look?”

It was Raven’s turn to snarl, but she grudgingly removed herself from the warmth of the bed and shuffled into her pants and brace, jamming a pair of flip flops on her bare feet. Octavia skipped around the kitchen like an excited Labrador as she waited for Raven to get her caffeine fix.

Only a stern glare from Anya stopped the excitable brunette from continuing her hyperactive movements, and Octavia hurriedly sat on a bar stool, and start clicking her fingernails on the counter, before hastily tucking her hands under her thighs when Anya’s upper lip twitched up in a silent snarl.

After a quick mug of coffee, and maybe a good morning kiss from Anya behind the safety of the bathroom door, Raven was decidedly more awake, and trooped after Octavia as she jumped and skipped and altogether _vibrated_ with energy down the road.

Once at Octavia’s house, a good forty minute walk away, she pointed proudly at a sprawling, furry plant growing in a red clay pot. Raven’s stomach grumbled in distaste.

“Are you being serious right now O? You woke me up, forced me to walk here without breakfast, to show me your plant?”

“It’s a pumpkin plant Raven!”

“I don’t care if it’s a Whomping Willow, if you don’t feed me in the next thirty seconds, I’m disowning you, and I’m taking the car.” Raven sniffed, crossing her arms over her chest. Her hip hurt.

“But Rae, there’s a pumpkin on it! I can’t grow plants, and now I have a pumpkin!” Octavia protested, pointing at a ping pong sized pumpkin hanging on a vine. It was true. Octavia couldn’t keep a cactus, no, a weed alive for longer than two days.

“Can I eat the pumpkin?” Raven grumbled.

“Clarke was happier for me than you are.”

“When did you tell Clarke?”

“I got off the phone with her when I arrived at your place. C’mon Raven, I grew a pumpkin!” Octavia did a little jump up and down, shaking the hand that was pointing at the tiny orange vegetable excitedly.

“Clarke got a _phone call_ ? Why couldn’t I get a phone call?! Why couldn’t you go and wake Clarke up at the asscrack of dawn and then drag her into a hike through town _in flip-flops with no bra_ to come look at your pumpkin?”

“Okay, okay, who wants bacon?” Lincoln hurriedly stopped the fight before it could begin, standing on the back porch wearing a gag apron that Raven had bought Octavia for Christmas at some point. How he managed to pull off the look, Raven couldn’t fathom. Stupid fae and their stupidly attractive genes.

“Me.” Anya announced suddenly, reminding both the squabbling women that they had a possible vampire standing behind them. Probably not the safest place to let a vampire stand.

~~~

Raven was constantly surprised by Anya.

It started with the impressive array of tattoos (they totally moved), and then went on to the sharp lines of the taller woman’s body, followed by the strange habits of walking along the beach near midnight. Then it was the startling amount of care she took with Raven, then the callous way that she did everything, the sparring, the goddamn fish.

The list went on and on and on and on.

However, the shy smile never got old. It appeared so rarely that Raven felt like she had touched a live wire every time she saw it.

“Come on.” Anya smiled, standing waist deep in the water, baby waves splashing musically against her perfect torso.

“Hell no.” Raven said, definitely _not_ staring at Anya’s torso.

“You’re wearing a swimming costume Raven.”

“This costume is to get you drooling, and my tan perfect, not for swimming.”

Anya had the decency to blush slightly, although no one could be sure, and she would never personally admit it.

“Your fear is me drowning. Maybe seeing me _not_ drowning will help you sleep at night.”

~~~

The water was frigid, and Raven was pretty sure she was going to lose a few toes, but she grudgingly started getting up from the towel, scrabbling in the sand for her crutches. She’d opted to go without her brace, because she was getting tired of picking sand out the joints, and strap tan lines weren’t any fun.

Anya’s icy, yet somehow burning hands gently knocked hers out the way, and a nod of consent later, she was carrying Raven across the sand. Of course, she wasn’t mature enough to resist throwing Raven into an unusually large wave, but even as Raven’s ass hit the sand, Anya’s arms were sliding around her waist, and gently setting her back on her feet.

Raven personally tried to drown the taller girl after that stunt, but Anya merely chuckled softly as Raven tugged fruitlessly at her shoulders.

~~~

Of course, Anya had always neglected to tell Raven that she could in fact, breathe underwater. Well, not exactly _breathe_ , so much as absorb oxygen from the water around her, thereby rendering her virtually incapable of drowning, no matter how much water entered her lungs.

She claimed it was not very comfortable to try and expel the water, and after intense questioning, admitted that the “water” that she had forced down Lexa’s throat a year before, was not in fact water, but rather a potion of sorts to ease the transition from water breathing to air breathing.

Raven insisted on knowing where the potion was kept, and Anya grudgingly produced her purple water canister. At that moment, Raven had never felt the urge to brain someone with the base of a metal water container that strongly before.

~~~

Anya liked to play with fire. The flames would dance in her eyes, creep down her arms, crackle between her fingers, forming trees, flowers, animals, birds in the air around her head. Raven found out incidentally, falling asleep on the couch, and opening her eyes to see a pack of wolves tumbling around the blonde’s head.

Anya liked to play with fire, and here’s one thing that Raven _would_ admit. She loved to watch Anya play with fire.

Tiny wolves were a common feature, wrestling and playing, sometimes through flaming trees, sometimes along burning plains. Plants, and flowers occurred often, sprouting, and blooming, and dying in a matter of seconds, their faces pointing at Raven in place of a sun. Sometimes Anya would create dragons from the yellow and red clay, tracing the shapes of talons and wings in the air. The dragons would roar silently, breathe smoke, and fly about, before diving back into oblivion.

Sometimes, usually when she was tired, Raven would unconsciously reach out and touch the creatures and trees. Anya was always quick to knock her hand away, carefully inspecting her fingers for any burns. Raven assumed that her contact had been too brief to cause any damage, because the flames were definitely real, Anya had started fires with a wayward animal before. Still, she had been _so_ certain that that dragon had been fluffy despite being made of fire...

~~~

It hadn’t escaped either of their notice that they still hadn’t spoken about Anya going _home_ , or Raven going with her, but after Octavia’s pumpkin fiasco, Anya had stolen Lincoln for two days, and when she’d come back, she’d been twitchy, and touchy about the entire subject of fae-dom. In fact, she'd just been twitchy and touchy about almost everything

It was only after Raven had threatened to blow torch her if she set the curtains on fire after being caught with various fiery creations again and quickly trying to hide them, that Anya started playing with fire openly around her. It was just another thing about the witch that Raven would never be able to replicate with her machines.

“Hey, Anya?”

“Yes, _Reivon_?” Anya replied sleepily, shuffling slightly in the blankets so that she could see Raven’s face.

“Tell me more about your home. Does it have a name? What stars do you have there? Do you have stars? How about a moon? And trees, what trees do you have? What food?”

“ _Reivon_ , if you continue to speak so fast, one day, you will run out of words.”

“Humour me here Cheekbones, I have cramps and I’m uncomfortable.”

“Would you like to move?”

“Just tell me about your home, please.”

 

So Anya did. It didn’t have a name as such, but she lived in a place called TonDC. There were more stars than people, and they told stories in voices that no human could understand. There were three moons, but only one was visible at a time. There were more trees than there were stars. Tall trees, small trees, trees that wrapped over each other like pit vipers, trees with red, sticky fruit.

Anya used her words sparingly, and insisted that Lexa could fabricate the world out of words better, but Raven would give her left leg to see Anya’s eyes gleam the way they did as she described the floating villages, the treetop towns, the towers spun of the forests themselves, of the stone pathways through Polis, wherever that was.

Raven didn’t remember falling asleep, but when she woke up, her head was filled with pictures of trees with red fruit, smooth stone roads under her feet, red dust spinning through a grassy field, strange birds with four wings singing to her. Her legs felt tired, as though she had been running, but of course, _that_ was impossible, and for some reason, her mouth tasted like berries and pineapple, instead of morning breath and toothpaste.

Anya was still asleep, one hand resting on Raven’s waist, the other tucked safely under her own chin. It was an innocent enough position, although her fingers were splayed under Raven’s shirt, leaving a handprint of heat against the skin there, and her legs were crooked just enough to tangle with Raven’s, although she was very mindful of the pain it caused Raven when her legs were jostled unexpectedly.

Her chest rose and fell slightly, and she was unusually...still. Anya was often still, sitting like a complete stone statue (gargoyle), her eyes narrowed against the sun (vampire), but when she slept, it was a soft kind of still, golden eyes closed, unaware of her surroundings (hmmm, goddess maybe?).

"You're staring _Reivon."_ Anya murmured softly. Maybe not so unaware. Her voice was rough with sleep, her accent heavy, sharpening her _r_ ’s, and shortening the vowels.

Raven hummed sleepily, and curled up closer to her, resting her cheek against sharp collarbones. Anya's heart was a steady, strong reassurance, as were the gentle puffs of warm air against her hair.

"The sun is rising." Anya stated, the wayward hand starting it’s ever present tracing.

"I'm sleeping. Shhh." Raven complained softly, gooseflesh rising along her spine as the hand lazily traced a circular pattern over her hip.

“ _Reivon_ , it’s time to wake up.”

“No. I’m sleeping.”

“I have to train.” Anya sighed, shifting slightly on the pillows, presumably so that she could give Raven a glare. Raven didn’t care, because Raven couldn’t see it.

“I have to sleep.”

There was tense silence for a moment, a silent battle of wills. Raven quietly started imagining Anya and some great beast staring each other down, foreheads pressed together, golden eyes not wavering away from blue.

The beast had a convex snout, like a true pitbull, and a sloping forehead, tiny, warped ears eerily still. It’s icy eyes were reptilian, but it was covered in thick white and black fur. Salt and pepper. It had hulking, broad shoulders, which tapered into a narrow spine, and concave belly, ridiculously thin, long hind legs somehow supporting its immense weight. A thick, ropy tail, covered in banded stripes of fur lashed the snow behind it, creating snow banks up to Raven’s calf in height. Its sharp fangs were bared, Anya was holding a wickedly sharp knife in her left hand.

If there was one thing that Raven had noticed about Anya’s body (she’d noticed lots of things, but most of them couldn’t be repeated in a church setting) it was that she didn’t have a dominant hand. She could write with her left as well as her right, although in both cases, she produced a barely legible scrawl, her fingers curled awkwardly around the pen. Come to think of it, Lexa didn’t have a dominant hand either… Maybe it was a fae thing? Never mind, Lincoln was very right handed, and Indra was as well.

Raven returned to her little image of a beast and an Anya. Somehow, she found herself doubting that the beast had won that little battle. Come to think of it, the fur rug on Anya’s bedroom floor was starting to appear suspiciously fluffy…

Anya jolted suddenly, as though someone had just put a claw through the blankets into her stomach (the damn cat probably) and scrambled out of bed like a cat out of the kitchen, somehow managing to not jarr Raven’s bad leg in the process.

“I’ll see you later?” Raven asked sleepily, instantly stealing the pillow that Anya had just vacated and burying her nose in the sweet smell of smoke and wildflowers.

There was a short silence, only broken by the sound of Anya’s clothes rustling as she dressed again.

Luckily for her, and less luckily for Raven, Anya was meticulous in her routine before getting into bed. She checked all the doors and windows, twice, tapped on the fishbowl to dim the light emitted by the glowing marine dandelion, and somehow changed into her pajamas without any slip ups. Sure, Raven got an eyeful of a smooth, muscled back, and sinfully lean legs, but that was it, before any available skin was covered by a loose black T-shirt and red plain drawstring pants. Her discarded clothes were neatly folded and placed in a pile within arm’s reach of the bed for easy access.

“Anya?”

Anya hummed in response, her bare back flexing beautifully in the reddish gold light that trickled through the crimson curtain. It took Raven a moment or so to find the train of thought she had been on and buy another ticket to board.

“Will I see you later?”

“I don’t know. There’s something I have to do. I should be back by tonight.” Anya replied, unusually brusque. Her usually smooth, flowing movements seemed more wooden, vertebrae crackling like sparks as she bent down to put her folded pajamas in a neat pile on the floor..

“Take care?”

“Okay. _Nodataim Reivon._ ”

“ _Nodataim Onya._ ”

 

Raven flopped out of bed, and hopped over to the window just in time to see Anya take the path to the left at a run, bare feet silent on the wooden planks, tattoo swirling up and down her forearm like a lost snake. She felt a surge of curiosity, and pressed her face against the cool glass in an effort to see further into the golden light. The path to the left didn’t lead to the cliff, nor the beach, not even the cove, and _definitely_ not Anya’s house.

The path to the left wasn’t used often, in fact, the last time Raven used it was back in highschool, and she had been with Clarke and Octavia, and Clarke’s fist was slowly crushing a white stick with a positive reading on it.

The path to the left lead straight to Granny Callie’s house, and somehow, it was never overgrown, nor were any of the planks rotten or uneven.

Raven struggled to get back into bed, her gammy leg refusing to play ball without its brace, and her crutches were leaning against the wall on the other side of the room. Really, what use were crutches when she couldn’t even reach them? She vaguely remembered Anya gently taking her crutches and placing them neatly against the wall. Sure, they were within arms reach when she was in bed, but _Anya_ had put them there.

At the time, she’d been grateful, crutches couldn’t stand on their own, and they usually clattered loudly to the wooden floor just as she was falling asleep, but now…

Raven removed Anya’s pillow from her face with a frustrated, Indra-worthy growl, and tossed it across the room. The marine dandelion splashed a little to show it’s grumpiness at the sudden act violence to the bedding.

“Am I going crazy Dandelion? I have a… I’m dating a… There’s an elf that spends almost every night in my bed, we’re not dating, she cooks, she made me a garden and a dragon, heck, she got me you. I’m practically living with a magical creature who has serious communication issues and always flees as soon as the sun rises like some kind of photokemic pyromaniac, and now I’m telling a magical fish about my relationship issues, at the ass crack of dawn. I’m going back to sleep.”

The fish, now called Dandelion bubbled quietly in agreement.

~~~

“Raven! Rae!”

“ _What_?!” Raven yelled from the bathtub, “I’m not going gallivanting! I’m taking a bath!”

Clarke crashed through the bathroom door, her face flushed, eyes sparkling. Raven didn’t even bother trying to strategically relocate the bubbles in her bath, instead sitting up higher in the water. Anya was right. She really needed a new lock. _Anya was right_ , it always led back to her, didn’t it? _Anya_ moved the crutches, _Anya_ said she needed a new lock, _Anya_ banned the mixing of alcohol.

“Yes, of course, come in Clarke, really, walk right into my bathroom. How are you? How’re the kids?” Raven snarked, examining the hickey forming beautifully on Clarke’s neck.

“Quit your whining, it’s not like you didn’t walk in and out of my bedroom and bathroom constantly.” Clarke sighed dramatically, flopping down on the toilet like it was a therapist's lounger. It was true, but that didn’t make Raven any less bitter.

The blonde’s neckline slipped slightly as she wriggled on the porcelain, trying to get comfortable, exposing another line of perfect, lip-shaped marks which vanished down her shirt.

“Well, how was she?”

“So amazing…wait…how did you know?”

“You look like a purple lipstick advert Clarke.”

Clarke blushed furiously, staring down the front of her shirt, and Raven started building a tower out of bubbles. _Arise Bathtub Knights, defend your Queen from overly dramatic blondes! Arise, arise!_

“Raven, I can't even describe it to you, it was-”

“Yeah, ew, I don’t want to know how Lexa is in bed, you really don’t have to tell me. She has muscles, and stamina, and really long fingers, and judging by the language she speaks, her tongue is pretty flexible. How close am I?”

“Oh my gods, you’re jealous! I can’t believe you and Anya haven’t-”

“If you came to my house and interrupted my bath to mock me, Clarke, you can leave.” Raven spat, slashing a hand through her tower. _Stupid knights, you have failed your mission! Leave this land and never return again!_

Clarke narrowed her eyes for a millisecond, then abruptly stood up and retrieved Raven’s towel from the rail. “If you’re going to vent, I’d prefer we did it outside the bathroom, it’s echoey in here.” SHe said, holding the towel open for her.

“Go away, Clarke.”

“Are we venting, or are you just going to yell at me for no reason other than you have vocal chords and I’m the only one here?”

“I said _leave_!”

~~~

Sulking, Raven limped around her house, glaring at inanimate objects as though they had done her a great personal offence. The plants quivered under the icy rain of bitterness that she emptied over them, along with water from the hosepipe, and she could have sworn that the coffee machine started smoking at one point, but otherwise, it just felt like the entire world seemed to be disagreeing with her.

She couldn’t even have a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, because Anya had used up the last of the peanut butter (smooth peanut butter, as if there wasn’t a worse crime) to make peanut butter chicken. _Anya_ had used up the smooth peanut butter that _Anya_ had bought. _Anya_ had run out of the house like the hounds of hell were chasing her (what kind of beast was stupid enough to chase Anya?) and _Anya_ had moved Raven’s crutches. _Anya_ had left the house so fast, she’d forgotten her shoes, which despite them being placed next to the wall, Raven had managed to trip over. _Anya_ had sorted out Raven’s miscellaneous screw box, thereby taking away Raven’s go-to therapy session. _Anya_ had run towards Granny Callie’s house, so Raven couldn’t even go there to vent about _Anya_ . _Anya_ wasn’t even there to vent at, because _Anya_ always vanished like a puff of smoke at daybreak.

 

~~~

Raven was sinking into the deep side of the couch and inebriety when Anya opened the door quietly, her shoes clunking softly against the wall as she placed them next to the door. She padded in socked feet through the kitchen, and froze when she saw the storm cloud sitting on the couch. Raven could have sworn that the woman had left her shoes behind, and she had a sore leg to show for it, but maybe Anya just owned more than one pair of shoes. Or she had four pairs of the same shoe.

“I thought you were asleep, otherwise I-”

“Where were you?”

“Training with Lexa.”

“The whole day?”

“Raven I feel like I’m being interrogated. What are you trying to ask?”

Raven took in the slumped shoulders straightening to form right angles to the floor, the sudden lift of the chin, the way Anya’s hands grabbed at thin air. She watched the woman brace for a fight, and by gods, was Raven going to give her one.

“What the actual _fuck_ was this morning? You just up and left like I’d electrocuted you or something!”

“I told you, I had to go train with-”

“Train with Lexa, yeah, you said. Twice. But you didn’t go train with Lexa, you went to Granny Callie’s. Why?”

Anya paced around the kitchen island once, before replying, Raven’s glare burning holes in her clothing as she detoured. Contrary to her appearance and behaviour, Anya did try and avoid conflict. She only fought when she had to, and always tried to find a compromise before anything. Raven was _sick_ of compromises.

Sick of being dependent on Anya to sleep over, because she got nightmares about Anya drowning if she didn’t. Sick of not knowing anything about the woman. Sick sick sick sick _sick_!

“I had to speak to Callie about something that she has experience with, and I don’t. I don’t understand why you’re so upset about this. Am I supposed to tell you everything that I’m going to do in my day? Is that what you want?”

“No, that’s not what I want Anya, I just-” Raven tugged on the ends of her hair, trying to defuse herself. _sick sick sick_.

“Are you sure? Because that’s what you’re making it sound like. You are not my partner Raven, I don’t owe my schedule to you!” Anya wasn’t being defused, oh no, Anya’s voice was rising above it’s normal calm, collected tone. Raven didn’t like raised voices. Raven didn’t like raised voices, or cars with bad brakes, or gin, or the sound of shattering glass.

“Say that again.”

“What?”

“ _You’re not my partner Raven_.” Raven mocked Anya’s voice, even though her stomach was twisting and squirming like one of those damn water dragons that Anya was constantly wrangling. Her head was spinning, and it felt like there were flashing headlights swerving towards her on a wet road.

“Raven, I-”

 _You’re not my partner Raven_.

“If I’m not your partner Anya, _why are you here_ ? Why do you care? You told me that I wasn’t a game to you. You said that _you_ weren’t going to throw me away.”

“I would never-”

“What are you playing at Anya? What is _this?_ ” Raven gestured at the smoky air between them, “If I’m not your partner, but I’m not a game either, _who am I_?”

“ _Reivon!_ _Jok!_ Can I finish a sentence please?!” Anya yelled. Raven flinched at the sudden increase in volume.

“Make it a decent sentence and I’ll consider it.” She said feebly.

“I understand that you’re angry, but I don’t understand what you’re angry about. You’re _not_ a game to me Raven, but you’re not my partner either. I went to Callie’s because I needed advice on exactly that question. What am I doing? My world was at war. Now my people live in terror. I ran away from the war, and I left my people to suffer the consequences of it. I’m a warrior, Raven. I was the General. I was supposed to lead my people to victory, and I failed them. I don’t _know_ what I’m doing. My people are suffering, whilst I’m here, playing with animals and sleeping in a warm bed with you every night. I’m trying to keep _you_ safe.” Anya’s fingers were slowly tightening around the granite countertop, and small pieces of the smooth, polished surface were crumbling to the floor. It made a crunching noise, and Raven’s leg started to itch at the sound.

“So you’re using me as a fall back because you need to feel like you’re protecting _someone_ ? Because _you_ failed, you are _using_ me? Here’s a news flash Anya, you’re not perfect! And you can’t just use someone to try and make yourself feel useful. By wallowing the way you are, you’re not helping anyone. Lexa nearly died, _twice_. You’re supposed to be protecting her, not me. I can take care of myself.”

“I am not _using_ you Raven!”

“Then why does it feel that way?! You used to always be here, and now it’s like you can barely spend time in the same room as me!”

“Don’t be ridiculous Raven, we literally sleep together.”

“Yeah, and? You’re gone during the day, you’re never on the beach anymore, and you won’t even sit on the same couch as me for fucks sakes.”

“I have  valid _reasons_ for my actions Raven!”

“Oh yeah? _What?!_ ” Raven screamed, slamming the bottle down onto the table with a crash.

Okay, so maybe the bottle broke and amber liquid flew into the air, and because Raven was drunk, and the lighting was crappy, it looked kinda like flames. That would be the logical explanation, right? Too much alcohol, bad lighting, a few tears, anyone could make that mistake. Right?

Or maybe Raven felt so much anger that the blonde was evasive, and fear that the blonde would leave, and the sound of smashing glass was ringing in her ears, and her arms were itching and burning, and when her fists made contact with the table flames exploded outwards like a pressurized canon, setting the ceiling on fire and burning what remained of the whiskey to a crisp wisp of smoke.

Anya was practically blown over the counter she was leaning against with the force of the blast, and swore when her head hit the wall. Her face was ashen, and her golden eyes seemed orange, her pupils blown wide.

“ _That_.” She hissed, before shakily getting off the floor and fleeing out the smoking door, blood trickling down her face from a small cut in her hairline.

 _Oh, that._ Raven thought slowly, _that’s a valid reason I suppose_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's official, I'm a terrible person. I'm sorry for the wait, things have been hectic, and they're not easing up anytime soon. I know this chapter's a bit scrambled, but it's supposed to be, y'know representative of Raven's state of being. (I'm also terrible at fillers, so that may attribute to it somewhat). The next chapter should be more organised.
> 
> Also, should we give the pumpkin a name? 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed, let me know what you think, here or on Tumblr under the same name.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this chapter has not been proof read.  
> Let me know if I made any mistakes.

“ _Onya! Onya, yu ait?_ ” Lexa voice filtered through the ringing in Raven’s ears as she stared at her bare hands in disbelief. The door crashed open, and Lexa pranced in wearing what could only be described as Clarke’s clothes, carrying _two_ swords. Raven barely noticed, focusing instead on the broken glass on the floor in front of her. Had she thrown that bottle? Had she thrown that bottle _at Anya?_

“ _Reivon_ ? _Reivon, yu ait?_ ”

_Did I throw a bottle at Anya? DidIthrowabottleatAnya?_

“Raven! Are you alright?!” Lexa demanded, discarding her swords on the table and kneeling in front of the stunned mechanic, “ _Raven!_ ”

“Did I throw a bottle at Anya?”

“ _What?_ Raven, your roof is on fire!”

“ _Did I throw a bottle at Anya?_ ” Raven demanded, her fists finding the collar of the shirt that Lexa was wearing, holding the younger girl in a death grip.

“ _Reivon,_ I do not know. You need to go outside, let me fix this.”

“Where’s Anya?”

“She is not here?”

“No, she’s not here! She… I don’t…”

“ _Reivon_ , you mean to say this wasn’t Anya?” Lexa asked, gently trying to detach Raven from her shirt.

“I just told you, she’s not here!”

“Anya’s not here, I understand. Please will you go outside?”

“I know, you know.”

“What?”

“You can do your voodoo magic, I know.”

“Voodoo magic… I don’t understand this word.”

“I know what you are, Lexa.”

Lexa frowned for a moment, before nodding briefly, and standing abruptly. She waved her hands about, kind of like a conductor, and then her fingers danced through a series of motions, like sign language, but not quite. Kind of like, not quite. Not quite Anya. Not the way she moved.

Water burst from the taps in the kitchen and flowed over the burning roof, forming some kind of liquid chore snake before flinging itself down the drain. How in all fuck Lexa managed to put out a fire in thirty seconds flat, Raven didn’t know, but what she did know was that she’d just been saved a whole lot of clean up. She’d also subconsciously formulated an entire spreadsheet of questions, and some blank paper for diagrams, but neither of them were in the right headspace to take _that_ exam.

Glass crunched under Lexa’s feet as she carried Raven out the door, citing the shattered bottle as a threat to Raven’s bare feet. Just how much glass could one bottle produce?

~~~

_Glass smashing, near her head, closer closer, sharp pain in her ear, warm blood. Cut ear. Glass. The stench of tequila. Yelling. Loud, loud, loud, somehow louder than the blood trickling down her face. Loud, loud, loud, and the world is ringing. Face is burning. Blood on the wall now. Have to clean it. Loud, loud, loud, face hurts, was that by hand or foot? Have to clean the wall. Clean the glass. Clean the wall, clean the glass, then clean the tequila. Clean wall, glass, tequila, blood. Wash shirt. Loud, loud, loud. Wall, glass, tequila, blood, shirt._

~~~

Twenty minutes later, Raven was seated on Anya’s couch, clutching a mug of some kind of tea between her hands, trying to soak up the heat through the ceramic. She was shaking, with cold or shock, she didn’t really know. All she knew was that they had a fight, there was yelling, and she had felt too hot and too cold all at the same time, before there had been fire, and a bottle smashing.

_Did I throw a bottle at Anya? Did she throw fire at me?_

“ _Reivon_ , how much did Anya say?” Lexa asked softly, “how much do you know?”

Raven stared blankly into the mug of greenish liquid, trying to recite the digits of pi. When that didn’t work, she lapsed into every physics equation she could think of.

“ _Reivon_ , please, I need you to answer me.”

So Raven did. Sure, every now and then there was a _3.1415926535_ thrown in, but she thought she did a pretty good job, so she didn't really understand why Lexa growled softly to herself before pacing up and down, angrily muttering to herself.

~~~

Anya had fucked up, and Lexa wouldn’t elaborate on how, insisting that the taller woman had to explain. Raven would have thrown her mug of tea at the skinny brunette, but it tasted too good to waste.

 _Anya has the answers to your questions._ Granny Callie said helpfully, _give her some time and she’ll tell you_ . _And you leave Leksa and Linkon out of this, y’hear? All you’d be doing is putting them in an awkward situation. Anya has your answers._

Anya had conveniently vanished off the face of Arkadia. Lexa and Lincoln didn’t know where she was, and Raven wasn’t so stupid as to start interrogating Indra. Hell, Octavia wasn’t even that stupid. No, actually, she was. Indra just liked Octavia. Indra did _not_ like Raven.

Anya had the answers, and Anya just happened to vanish, why did that sound so much like someone Raven knew…

It took a week of empty sleep, shredded fingernails and nervous fidgeting, as well as a large amount of alcohol for Raven’s brain to click. It took another notebook of bionic human drawings, a map of Arkadia, and a grease fire for all the damnable pieces to click together. ANd when they clicked together, it was with a bitterly satisfying _thunk_ sound.

It was same _thunk_ sound that Clarke’s hand made as it hit the coffee table as she laughed at something Lexa had said, her blue eyes dazed with alcohol. _Thunk, thunk,Thunk_ . _Map, Anya, magic, fire._ **_Thunk_ ** **.**

She escaped Clarke’s house, Lexa’s emerald stare watching as she snuck out the side door, but not doing anything to stop her. For the first time since she’d met the wiry brunette, Raven felt uncomfortable under the unnaturally bright spotlights watching her. Lexa was behaving… weirdly. Like she had behaved the first few days after washing up. Her weight was on her toes, and her accent was thickening over the english words. She was wound up tighter than a clock, she was unusually protective of Clarke, barely letting her out of her sight, and Raven had noticed the knife hidden in Lexa’s waistband. Something was going to happen.

 _Something is going to happen_ _tonight_. Raven thought as she crept down the street, feeling dizzy now that she was out of sight of those piercing green eyes. Good or bad, she wasn’t sure.

It took her half an hour to try and hobble and spin her way to the beach (the sky was totally rotating really fast, a blur of stars that existed and stars that didn’t, constellations and stories dancing across a velvet stage, and a lamppost ran across the street). Raven felt more balanced when she dug her toes into the sand, the waves gleaming green as they washed up, and down, and up, and down, cold flames licking at her ankles. She vaguely remember leaving her shoes under the coffee table at Clarke’s house.

The ocean whispered to her, soft, gentle words in a language Raven had heard before, but couldn’t quite understand. It was like it was being spoken via a crappy speaker in the room next door. The sand and cold flames gave way to the smooth wood of the walkways, and the gentle caress of the small vines that grew over the edges of the path, leaves knocking softly into her knees. The lights from her house glowed yellow through the trees, a sickly gold colour in the silver greens and blues of the night. She kept walking, up, up, up the pathway, then down, down, down through the thick trees to the cove.

The wood lapsed back into sand, and then cold, gritty rock, and she pulled herself along using the rocks as crutches, trying not to knock her leg harder than necessary into the unforgiving basalt. The ocean was hissing now, louder and louder, words tumbling over each other faster than Lexa could fire off questions, or her own hand could scribble equations. The caves loomed in front of her, like a great, hungry mouth, trying to devour the dancing stars.

The bottomless puddle that had sucked up Octavia and spat her out into the bay all those years ago glowed a violent green, but the cavern was otherwise empty. The rocky walls were awash with the sea and light, wreaking havoc on Raven’s depth perception. The patch of ocean in the rock pitched and roiled as though violent storms rocked its surface, sloshing loudly, strong hands tugging at Raven’s bare feet, waves splashing up her legs, soaking her pants and brace.

She held onto the rocky wall to keep her feet under her, and stepped closer to the hole. The only sound other than her breathing was the soft sound of the distant waves, and the loud splashes from the floor. It was eerie. Usually the caves moaned with wind, and the sound of things skittering (it was squirrels and one lonely ferret) and the feeling of growth in general mixed with the sea to create a strange type of white noise, but at that moment, there was only the faint whispers of the sea and the rather violent sounds coming from the sinkhole.

“I’ll jump.” Raven whispered, then cleared her throat and repeated herself. “I’ll jump.” She told the gateway in the empty cave. She lifted one foot, holding it above the pitching water that seemed to reach up and wrap over her ankle, sliding up her leg like a snake.

A shape detached itself from the darkness, like a bat flaring its wings, and a strong golden light flickered into existence, fighting some of the green back into the hole, tentacles withdrawing like shadows from light.

For once, Anya’s feet dipped below the surface of the toxic green water, a colour eerily similar to Lexa’s eyes, soft splashes betraying her otherwise silent approach. She was wearing her leather pants again, and her feet were bare. Some kind of armour covered her torso and hands, and her hair was twisted into a crown of braids. A knife was strapped to her thigh in a solid leather holster, and the thick fur ruff from her coat only made her seem less human, more...fae.

Her eyes seemed more like molten gold than Raven had ever seen them, and her hands shook slightly as they hung by her sides. She seemed...tired.

“I’ll jump.” Raven repeated for a third time, her voice dropping back to a whisper.

“ _Beja_ , no.” Anya replied, lifting her chin slightly, even though one corner of her mouth ticked down. A show. It was all a show. Anya was scared.

“I want answers.”

“I know.”

Raven suddenly felt exhausted, the weight of the watery vine creeping up her thigh was weighing her down, making her lean closer towards the green whirlpool that could whisk her far, far away. Far, far away to the place with sticky red fruit, and more trees than people and more stars than trees, and thick dust and cobbled streets. A place with wooden cities, and cities in the trees, and towers like trees. A place where the stars and the trees whispered stories in tongues long forgotten, where dragons curled around mountain peaks, and fish glowed, and birds had four wings and sharp, pink beaks. Where the rain tasted like honey, and the honey was as readily available as rain. Where the only light in the world seemed to be the glowing red gold of embers from a fire, and the ice white glow from the sky.

“ _Reivon_ , I know what you’re seeing. Please, don’t go there. Not now, not yet. I can explain everything.” Anya begged, walking forwards slightly, the water pulsing golden light outwards from her ankles, sparks dissolving in the green. It was a fruitless effort to chase the water back into the hole.

“You can explain everything?”

“Yes.”

“You can explain the things that have been happening?”

“Yes.”

“The fire?”

“Yes.”

“Your behaviour?”

“Yes.”

“And the nightmares? Can you explain those?” Raven pointed an accusing finger at the drained looking blonde with golden light flickering under her feet. Raven didn’t notice the second tendril of water creeping up her good leg, curling around her ankle like a parasite.

“No. Those I can’t explain. Those I have to show.” Anya was speaking softly, trying to placate the situation, the golden light getting weaker and weaker.

“And the things I remember but I’ve never seen? The constellations that don’t exist? The fruit I’ve never eaten, and somehow know the taste of? The places I know everything about, but never been to?” Raven choked on the words, her tears merging the gold and green, the green dissolving the gold.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Raven nodded weakly.

“Okay?” Anya echoed, halting in her forward movement.

“Okay.” Raven agreed, and the watery vines swirled over her hips and yanked her forwards, towards the gateway.

“ _REIVON!_ ” Anya yelled, and the world exploded into fragments of golden light, before everything went black.

Strong arms encircled her waist and forced her backwards, and Raven fell. She landed on a surprisingly soft surface, considering the fact that the entire cave system was made of basalt. There was a soft clicking sound, and sparks flared to life in front of her. The soft surface was Anya, who was completely soaked in water, holding a small yellow flame in one hand.

“Oops.” Raven giggled weakly.

Anya was decidedly less amused, and reached up to pull Raven back in for another tight embrace. Despite being soaked with briny seawater, she still smelled like smoke and flowers.

“You’re all wet, Jesus Christ.”

Anya mumbled something about being nailed to a tree in her ear, and Raven had to laugh.

~~~

“ _Reivon_ , _beja_.”

Raven groaned, and pressed closer to Anya, ignoring the desperate pleas.

“ _Reivon!_ ”

“ _No_ , you can’t go training. You have to stay here, because I’m in pain, and I’m shamelessly going to say that it is your fault.” Raven grumbled, nuzzled further into the blonde’s neck (if that was at all possible).

“ _Reivon,_ I need to use the bathroom.” Anya protested, although her voice was saddened.

“Well now I feel like a dick, thanks for that. I didn’t mean it then, am I forgiven?”

“You will be when you _get off_.”

Raven grudgingly rolled off her pillow space heater painkiller retrieving security blanket, finally acknowledging that her knee had probably been digging into Anya’s bladder and/or kidney for the last few hours.

True to her function, Anya returned with a glass of water and the bottle of pain medication, before sliding back into bed. She wiggled her fingers, before asking _may I?_ in a strangely innocent, humbled tone.

Raven cautiously agreed, and Anya pressed her magically heated hands to her aching hip joint, soothing the pain. Maybe Anya blushed at the borderline pornographic moan that Raven may have let out when the heat drew out some of the pain, leaving her cramping muscles singing slightly in relief.

“Tell me more.”She hissed, brain function kicking in again. If she kept her mind focused on something else, the pain would have to fade.

“About?”

“TonDC. Anything, something.”

“I can explain the gateway.”

Raven wriggled slightly, getting comfortable, before nodding to Anya to start the story.

“There are some words I can’t translate directly, but I’ll try. The gateway will only work for my people. It’s power is drawn from the Commander, the _natblida_ who holds the throne. When the Commander dies, the gateway passes to the next _natblida_ when they ascend to the throne.

The gateway merely draws its strength from the Commander, the Commander has no control over when and where it will open or close, only the knowledge that it has, or is, being used. The animals can slip through as they so please, because they are all connected to the _Fleim._ It is...taxing for a person to step through the gateway.”

“The green light, that was because of Lexa, right?”

“ _Sha_.”

“And the gold? That was you?”

Anya nodded slightly, not meeting Raven’s eyes, evidently dreading the next question.

“What’s a _natblida?_ ”

Anya had a specific set of actions she carried out when she was trying to transcribe her thoughts to words. She didn’t blink, and her usually smooth, repetitive motions either became erratic and jerky, or ceased entirely, slipping into a stony facade. She also took her time with a reply, sorting through the information over and over again, weeding and trimming anything that wasn’t strictly necessary.

“What do you know of what I can do? What’s the law of magic?”

“Opposing elements can’t have kids. You can learn elements from your partners. You can do all four, although you were only born of flame and earth.”

“ _Sha_ . A _natblida_ is what we call someone who has ties to all four of the physical elements.”

“Are you a _natblida_?”

“No.”

“But Lexa is?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the difference between you and her?”

“Lexa was born with her ties. Two of mine had to be made.”

“But if you’re not a _natblida_ , why does the gateway listen to you? Why was there golden light?”

“I am not a _natblida_. The gateway will never listen to me.”

“But it did!”

“It didn’t. Not really.”

“But you said that-”

“I know what I said Raven. The golden _light_ as you put it was me, but the gateway was not  under my control. I have ties with all four physical elements, but I do not have direct ties to the _Fleim_ , and therefore, I have no direct tie to the gateway.”

Seeing that she was getting nowhere with the current topic, Raven changed it. They’d migrated out of bed, and were sitting in the sun on the porch furniture, nibbling on sandwiches (with crunchy peanut butter). Raven’s leg was resting on Anya’s lap, and Anya was tracing patterns from her ankle to her thigh, burning the swirling line into her skin like a tattoo. Speaking of which, Anya’s collarbone tattoo had decided to pack up and move to the other side of the blonde’s torso. It had decided to do so in the amount of time that it took Anya to roll out of bed, go to the bathroom, and return with painkillers and a glass of water.

“You mean to say there are more than four elements?”

“There are only four physical elements, but many more other elements.”

“Such as?”

“Light and Darkness, Life and Death, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Blood, and Love. Loyalty.”

“Do you have ties with any of those?”

“That is a very personal question, _Reivon_.”

“But do you?” Raven persisted, watching Anya slowly consider her answer. Or Anya was watching the ant that was racing towards the bread, a lone warrior in a desperate voyage for resources. Anya leaned forwards and broke off a small piece from the loaf, crumbled it, and placed it in front of the ant before answering. _Aha, so Anya is to blame for the ant infestation. When they take over the world, she’s the first person to be sacrificed for food._

“Yes. I do have ties with some of the other elements.” She said eventually, unblinkingly watching the ant haul its bounty back towards home.

“Yeah, but which ones? How do you get ties with them? How do they link you to the gateway? What’s a _Fleim_ ? I still don’t understand the difference between a normal person and a _natblida_ , what does that even mean?” Anya tactfully jammed Raven’s sandwich into her mouth, effectively stopping to flow of questions. She was nothing if not pragmatic.

Raven grumbled into the sweet bread, but managed to keep silent for long enough for Anya to formulate some sort of answer.

“ _Natblida_ means night blood.”

“And the difference?”

“Raven, you are asking me about the secrets of my people here. Secrets that in the past I have guarded unto death.”

“You already know the secrets of my people. Octavia’s an alien and Clarke’s a bitch. Also, you couldn’t have guarded it with your life, because you’re still alive.”

“ _Reivon_ if you repeat this to any humans, I will cut out your tongue. I said _unto death_ , I didn’t say _my_ death.”

“And here I was, thinking you _liked_ my tongue.”

Anya glared at her, and Raven quickly took another bite out of her sandwich. Instant mute. Now how to get it to work on Clarke...

“ _Natblidas_ are rare. When I left there were only nine. They are born with ties to all elements, and are more powerful than other people. _Natblidas_ are more likely to have ties to Life and Death than others.”

“Yeah, but what’s the difference between them and you? There has to be an identifying factor, I mean, _you_ could be a _natblida_ , you’re powerful and have all four ties, I don’t understand-”

“They have _nat_ blood, _Reivon_! Their blood is black!”

That stunted Raven for all of two seconds. “But Lexa has red blood, and you said that she-”

“This side of the gateway, yes, Lexa has red blood. But on the other side, her blood is black.”

“I have another question.”

“You always do.”

“If she has black blood, what colour are her bruises?”

~~~

“Focus _Reivon!_ ” Anya urged softly, her eyes flickering with light.

Raven had never wanted to set the blonde on fire _so_ badly in her entire life. She sent a silent prayer to whichever god might be listening, before closing her eyes and flicking her hand towards the sky.

“ _SIX!_ Fuck yes! Go home Lexa!” She crowed, moving her piece six places forwards and knocking the little plastic green pawn over. The dice lay in clear view of the two astounded blondes, the smirking mechanic, and the pouting warrior, one three, and one six. A grand total of nine. Six took out the bog monster, and three placed her other piece safely in the group huddle in the middle of the board.

Lexa frowned, and turned to Clarke with a pleading pout on her face.

Raven tried not to yelp when she felt Anya’s teeth against the side of her neck for a split second when the vampire smiled, mid victory tease. Judging by the look on Clarke's face, and the soft, positively evil chuckle in her ear, her efforts weren’t a complete success.

It had been an intense four hour game of couples Ludo, but in the end, Clarke (blue) and Anya (yellow) had been defeated, Clarke by Raven and Anya also by Raven, leaving Lexa with one piece to take the final two steps to safety, and Raven with one piece on the home stretch, and the second placed strategically to take Lexa out. And she did.

And if Anya didn’t stop tracing kisses up and down her neck whilst Clarke and Lexa were distracted with each other’s eyes or some equally gooey bullshit, Raven was going to self destruct, and if she did stop, Raven was going to punch her.

“ _Onya, yu gadahod shoun of.”_ Lexa teased.

“You and Clarke are literally dating.” Raven shot back instantly, and both of the accused blushed furiously, their hands somehow, _magically_ becoming linked. They were honestly worse than newlyweds.

Sure, Raven was sitting in Anya’s lap, and was just about ready to kick the two giggling fools out, but it was fun to make Clarke and Lexa squirm. Especially Lexa, who made little puppy-dog faces when embarrassed. How someone who looked like a puzzled Gold Retriever on a regular basis managed to become the leader of a nation, Raven would probably never know.

“I beat the Commander.”

“You defeated me too _Reivon._ ” Anya reminded her, a small smile toying with the corners of her mouth. Raven was so distracted by it that she didn’t notice Clarke and her pet lapdog sneaking out the front door. Usually, she’d be vaguely upset, because she loved tormenting the two of them, but she didn’t really mind, because Anya’s hands had snuck under her shirt and were slowly creeping (and burning) their way along her skin.

“Yeah, but I didn’t need a boardgame to do that.” Raven teased, smirking slightly, having beaten Anya once more.

“You’re right. All you needed was a smile.” Anya shot back. Point blank headshot. Game over.

~~~

“If you say you have to go train, I’m going to electrocute you.” Raven threatened the witch lying beside her. Anya chuckled softly, her arm tightening the slightest bit around Raven’s waist. Raven shivered slightly as warm breath tickled the rather sensitive, probably purple skin on her neck.

“Shhh, I’m sleeping.” Anya grumbled, placing a soft kiss on the ticklish spot (yup, there was definitely a mark there).

Raven grinned broadly into the morning air. She was warm, happy, albeit a bit hungry, and Anya was...wrapped? draped? everywhere. Her face was buried in the crook of Raven’s neck, there was an arm holding her waist, and Anya’s legs were tangled with hers and the sheets, in a strangely painless mess.

“ _Reivon_ …” Anya growled sleepily.

“Mmm?”

“You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

“I can think of better things to do.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah. You.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sleeping. _Ow!”_ Anya sat up, affronted, “Did you just...”

“Yes. I did.” Raven smirked at the sight of no less than four perfect mouth-shaped marks on Anya’s golden skin.

“ _Reivon…_ ”

“Oh could you _please_ stop talking!”

And for once, Anya listened.

~~~

Raven had barely registered the sound of the cottage door opening when Anya tossed the sheets over her, and a knife in the general direction of Lexa, who hastily ducked, barely avoided getting a blade to the face.

Lexa fixed her eyes on the ceiling, and waited patiently for Anya to stop swearing at her. It took a while, but eventually the blonde wound down from her tirade.

“Octavia may have created a landslide.” Lexa said evenly, unperturbed by the verbal abuse. Raven finally started to understand how the hell Lexa could have possibly become the Commander. Anya’s threats could probably send Murphy running for the hills, and Lexa had barely flinched.

“What? How? She weighs the same amount as a dense chipmunk.” Raven asked, strategically relocating the sheets for optimal coverage.

“Lincoln got her a… a… _strikpakstoka_.”

“And _that_ caused the _ogedaflouthru_?” Anya asked skeptically, nonchalantly locating her clothes, scattered across the floor. Raven felt a twinge of pride when Anya had to hunt around for her shirt, eventually finding it hanging over the bathroom door.

“She did cry as well.” Lexa added helpfully.

“And now an explanation in English? Y’know, because not all of us are illegal immigrants?” Raven asked.

“Get dressed, I’ll explain on the way.” Anya replied, neatly depositing all of Raven’s clothes on the bed, and moving her crutches closer. She dropped a soft kiss on Raven’s forehead, before pushing Lexa out of the room by her face and closing the door quietly behind her, “and also, please get a lock for your door.”

~~~

Octavia lived in a nice little house, typical Arkadia style. It had a basement in which the couple had built a bar, and a small den, and an attic, which they had made into a basic gym, and everything was jammed together in a small, yet somehow big space. There were two bedrooms, and a comfortable enough couch in the basement for someone to sleep on, as well as dancer-comfortable furniture in the living room. All in all, the house could, and had on occasion cater for fourteen.

It also happened to be sticking up into the air at a forty seven degree tilt on an outcrop of rock that had appeared in the space of three days. _Wait..._ Raven did the maths. She’d rigged Octavia’s hairdryer on Monday, _and Tuesday, Wednesday, Thurs- yeah, three days_.

Raven practically titpunched Clarke at the sight. Clarke looked livid, Octavia looked like it was Christmas morning, and kept staring at her hands, Lincoln was holding a squirming puppy, whilst Indra practically gnawed off the ear that the puppy wasn’t licking. Lincoln looked like someone had pissed in his Cheerios and then burnt his Christmas tree, before telling him that Halloween had been cancelled.

Miserable. Lincoln looked miserable. How anyone could be miserable whilst holding a fluffy puppy, Raven didn’t quite know, but Lincoln seemed to be doing a fairly decent job of it.

Anya and Lexa hurriedly marched over to the two fae. Anya to murder Lincoln, and Lexa presumably to rescue him. The puppy, not Lincoln. Lexa was presumably going to rescue the puppy.

“Clarkey! I got a puppy!” Octavia squealed, as if Clarke couldn’t see the animal, which had seemingly fallen asleep on Lexa’s shoulder, his small head buried in her curly hair.

“What’s his name?” Raven asked at the same time that Clarke asked, “What the bloody fuck did you do your house?”

“His name is Pumpkin! Also, I have magic powers. Imma go get him to introduce you guys!” Octavia giggled, then skipped off to go and fetch her baby.

Clarke turned to Raven with murder in her eyes, “You know what’s going on here, don’t you?”

“Well, I’d say it’s pretty self explanatory Clarke, Octavia’s got a puppy called Pumpkin. She can barely keep a plant alive. Gods know what was going through Lincoln’s head am I right?”

“ _Raven_ !Her _house_ is… is... _elevated_!”

“Oh, well, that’s also pretty self explanatory, hey fluffy baby!” Raven mumbled, quickly turning her attention to the squirming ball of fur cradled in Octavia’s arms, “Aren’t you just the cutest!”

He was pretty cute, with burnt russet fur, a licky pink tongue and icy eyes. His ears perked when he heard Raven’s voice, and he quit eating O’s hair long enough to give the mechanic’s hand a sloppy lick. Raven joined Octavia in the goo basket after a tentative pat to the the soft fur on his head. Clarke however, kept her distance, thoroughly unamused.

“ _Octavia!_ ” She yelped in a strangled voice, eyes so wide that Raven suddenly had a fear of drowning even though she was standing on a green lawn.

“What Clarke? Say hello to your nephew!”

“ _That’s a wolf!_ ”

“Just a baby one…” Octavia protested, a pout crossing her face.

**“ _Octavia it has reptile eyes! Four of them!"_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I starting exams on Tuesday? Yes.  
> Is this a new chapter? Yes.
> 
> So the dog (?) is called Pumpkin, what should we call the pumpkin?  
> Hope you enjoyed it :)


	7. Chapter 7

Raven was woken up by the front door slamming into the wall. Anya growled and Clarke Griffin hadn’t bothered to pull the blankets off of the sleeping lump in the middle of the bed before she slammed a pillow down on it’s head. And again. And again.

“How long did you know, Raven?!” She yelled at the blankets, interjecting her yells with powerful pillow slaps, “Why didn’t you tell me!”

The blankets were suddenly pulled away from a very angry, very sleepy, very naked Anya, who growled loudly at the intruding blonde. Clarke uttered a strangled scream and whacked Anya in the face in shock, before fleeing.

Raven pulled the blankets away from her face and burst out laughing at Anya’s furious expression.

“Thank you for protecting me from Clarke.” She giggled, earning her a pillow to the face. 

“When. Will. You. Get. A. Lock!” Anya snarled, gently battering the shorter girl with a pillow. When that didn’t get Raven to stop laughing, she attacked, long fingers mercilessly finding all of Raven’s ticklish spots.

Raven later protested that tickling was  _ not _ the way to get someone to stop laughing, and Anya pretended not to know what on earth she was talking about.

Needless to say, Anya hunted Clarke down later in the week and apparently gave her a slight drowning, which sent Clarke scurrying to hide with Lexa, who Anya had not yet forgiven for walking into Raven’s house to inform them about Octavia.

~~~

Unlike the cowering couple in the Griffin’s house, Octavia and Lincoln were having an utter ball, chasing Pumpkin up and down their little section of coast. Much to Octavia and Raven’s delight, no one else in the town seemed to notice the extra eyes, or mildly feral appearance of the squirmy pup, and the two of them laughed like hyenas whenever an unfortunate customer to Octavia’s shop bent to pet the pup with a  _ awww aren’t you just adorable _ , and received a bit of a hard nibble in return. Raven was less amused when Octavia taught him to jump onto counters, which led to more than a few  _ unintentional, I swear _ break ins, because the dog had realised that he could open the fridge, and that Raven’s house always had the best snacks.

Octavia’s pumpkin also thrived, snaking it’s way across the lawn and climbing up the balustrade, bearing four more ping pong ball sized squash, and Anya and Lincoln carefully put Octavia’s house back on the ground.

~~~

“Hey Anya?”

“Hmmm?” Anya didn’t turn away from her cooking, but then again, the pan was on fire, and she was probably as mesmerised by the flickering blue flames as Dandelion was.

“Teach me to fight?”

Anya liked to pretend she didn’t set the curtains on fire, but Dandelion knew the truth.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I don’t want to be scared when you’re not here.” Raven said immediately. She’d been thinking on it for a while, and three notebooks filled with bionic sketches and figures and lists of parts later, she’d decided that Anya couldn’t have all the fun of hitting people with sticks. 

Needless to say, Anya extinguished the fire, and promptly drove the conversation back to Raven’s bedroom, but agreed, albeit grudgingly, after Raven had her wrapped in a koala embrace.

“You won’t be fighting with those, so put that down and get the idea out your head.” Anya ordered, absently hanging her shirt on a convenient tree branch.

Raven pouted, “Why? You always fight with these.”

“To use a staff, you are too slow. Not bendy enough.”

“I’m plenty bendy!” Raven protested immediately.

Anya pushed Raven’s left leg backwards, into a lunge position, before shoving her backwards lightly, causing her entire leg to buckle, regardless of the brace. Raven would have slammed into the ground if Anya hadn’t smoothly set her back on her feet before retreating to a safe distance.

“Not bendy enough.” She repeated, and continued before Raven could give her a verbal lashing about disabilities, “So you’ll be better fighting at a distance. Archery, knives, maybe explosions if you can master fire. If you still want to learn using the staff, you can. After I’ve taught you the things that  _ will _ protect you, I will teach you what you want”

Raven put the stick down to listen, but only after Anya had shown her how efficient a small knife and a good aim were, by pinning Indra to a tree by the collar on her shirt. Indra promptly sent the knife spinning back at Anya’s head, which she deflected with a rock that she’d hastily pulled from the earth.

~~~

Raven ached everywhere by the time she shuffled home, and could barely summon the energy to tumble into her bathtub. Anya had no mercy. Anya had  _ absolutely _ no sympathy. Anya did have the best damn magical hands that Raven had ever known of.

“ _ Owwww _ !” Raven whined into the pillow, only to receive a gentle flick on the ear. Anya was straddling the backs of her legs and meticulously beating Raven’s screaming muscles into submission with warm skin and strong hands.

“Yes, right there- _ FUCK _ !” Raven yelped as Anya found a particularly painful patch of skin.

“I told you it was going to hurt.”

“Yeah, but -  _ shit _ \- I thought you would have taken it slightly - _ Jesus Christ- _ easier on me.”

“Why?”

“Because you like me?”

“If anything  _ Reivon _ , that is incentive for me to take it less  _ easy _ on you.”

“That last set of sit ups was unnecessary. At least it’s over until tomorrow and I can sleep now.”

“On the contrary. Unless you want to be unable to move tomorrow, you can sleep for half an hour before I’m waking you up to stretch.”

“ _What?!_ **OW!** _”_

~~~

Raven was viciously watering her little flower garden when she heard a car purr up the driveway. Well no, that’s a lie. She was carefully drowning every single stalk and singing and dancing along the gray stone pathways that wound between the plants when a car door slammed, causing her to topple ass over head into a low shrub and get her hair caught in it’s spiky branches.

“Raven?” A voice called out in confusion.

“Bellamy?”

“You okay in there?” Bellamy asked, stepping over the low fence and eyeing the holes Anya’s knives had left in the wood suspiciously. Raven smirked, wait until he saw the Tic Tac trees.

“You cut your hair again.”

“Yeah...it’s kind of required…” He said awkwardly, still distracted by the impaled fence.

“You look like Jasper in eleventh grade.”

“Polite as ever.”

“Says the one who won’t even help a cripple out of a flowerbed.” Raven shot back immediately, growling when the plant refused to release it’s grip on her hair, “ _ I swear I will make vegetable stew and you are the first ingredient! _ ” She spat in Trigedasleng. The plant let go, and Raven accepted Bellamy’s hand up.

“You’re looking good Reyes.”

“I always look good Bellamy. Do you want some coffee?”

“Yeah, sure.”

~~~

Bellamy hadn’t really changed, but Raven caught his eyes lingering slightly when he thought she wasn’t watching. In fact, a few years ago, Raven probably wouldn’t have noticed the way that his eyes skated across her collarbones, or settled for a millisecond too long on her chest when she leaned forwards to flick an ant off the table, or the way he kept trying to push hair that wasn’t there out his face. A few years ago, Raven wasn’t (almost) fluent in Anya’s Body Language either. Bellamy’s seemingly small gestures were like yells through a megaphone to her.

“So is the food really as bad as they say?”

“You mean scrambled eggs aren’t supposed to be blue?”

“Oh  _ gods _ ew!”

“Yeah.” Bellamy chuckled, reaching for his mug, only to realise that it was empty.

“Want some more?”

“Nah… I should be heading back, I told O I was arriving today.”

“You haven’t been to see O yet?!” Raven demanded, picking up the empty mugs and taking them to the sink. 

The sun painted the sky a blazing gold as it slowly dissolved into the sea, leaving the inside of the house in some kind of alternative universe of glow. Dandelion’s sickly green light made the bedroom doorway seem like a portal to Slime Land. Raven felt a tinge of worry for the fish as she quickly pulled the door closed. She’d get Anya to check on him when she came home from her day of galavanting. 

“Not yet… Thought I’d come say howdy first.” Bellamy had the decency to blush in the dim light that struggled through the windows. Raven wondered why as she placed the mugs in the sink. He drifted around the living room, looking at the furniture, at the pictures of Clarke and Octavia on the mantel.

There was silence as she started washing the mugs and breakfast things (did she have lunch? Obviously not), placing them upside down on the drying rack.

“I missed you Raven.”

“I missed you too Bell. I think O misses you more though. You should go see her. You can meet her boyfriend.”

“Yeah, she mentioned him, Lincoln, right?”

“Yup. He’s pretty great, treats her like a princess. It’s going to her head.”

“I’ll have to go talk to him then. And you?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Oh, no.” She chuckled lightly, tossing a lost spoon into the cutlery box of the drying rack.

“Good.”

“Excuse me?” Raven turned to find him standing barely a meter away, hovering on the borders of her Personal Space. Her hand still in the soapy water closed around the handle of a fork. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

“You don’t have a boyfriend. Means we can go back to-” He tried to smile the smile that would’ve made Teenage Raven smile hopelessly back. Teenage Raven was a right idiot sometimes. In all honesty, College Raven had also been an idiot.

“I really hope you were about to finish that sentence with  _ friends _ , because I distinctly remember you having a girlfriend called Gina.”

“You don’t know? GIna and I broke up, means we can still fu-” He smiled the Smile, but it seemed like the military had cut his charm as well as his hair. 

“I may not have a boyfriend, but I do have a girlfriend. Didn’t O tell you about this?”

“No she-wait,  _ what? _ ”

“I have a girlfriend Bellamy.”

“What?” He resembled a goldfish. 

Raven almost laughed. Bellamy was always the butt of the Musketeers jokes. He could be very slow, especially when faced with Octavia’s inside knowledge, Raven’s sharp tongue and Clarke’s vocabulary.

“I’m dating a girl. Did the coffee mess up your wiring or something?” Maybe Raven wasn’t so successful at not laughing.

“Oh, I get it, you’re joking with me.”

“What? No! Bellamy, I’m dating a girl. Her name is Anya. If you stick around for like, five minutes, you can probably me-”

“You’re kidding, right?  _ Right?! _ ”

“Why would I-”

“You’re not a fucking  _ dyke _ Raven! You slept with me in college, remember? And it wasn’t just a once off, remember that-”

“ _Excuse me?!_ ** _What_** did you just call me?” Raven’s temper was rare to appear, but when it did, it was legendary around Arkadia. Not even Clarke and Octavia stuck around when Raven lost her temper. In fact, Anya would never admit it, but she also preferred making herself scarce when Raven lost her temper.

“-and then again when you found out about Clarke and Finn, and at the Christmas party, and-”

“Get out.”

“What?”

“I said  _ get out _ .” It was a good thing Bellamy was oblivious, and that Raven’s hands were still in the sink, because only the birds nesting on the windowsill saw the orange flash beneath the receding bubbles, and the steam that suddenly fogged the window.

“Why? Because I called you a dyke? Raven, there’s nothing wrong with you having needs, but  _ seriously?  _ You’re actually  _ dating _ a girl? I know I’ve been away, but really? Wasn’t there  _ any _ other guy in town? Are you that fucking  _ useless _ ? Did no one else  _ want _ you? Is that it? No one else wants to sleep with a cripple? Does no one else want you?” Bellamy took a step forwards, his voice rising, and Raven instinctively pressed herself backwards, the counter digging into the small of her back. She could smell gin. “It’s okay now, I’m back. You don’t have to use some bitch to-”

“Bellamy, I told you to leave!” She tried to inject her voice with venom, but the traitorous sound was wavering and weak.

“ _ NO! _ Maybe you can't see it, but I  _ can _ ! You need help Raven! I’m here to give it to you! I know a guy whose uncle is a pastor at a camp, I can get you a place there, and then we can be together! I can  _ help _ you!”

“I don’t need help!” Raven screamed, slamming her left fist into Bellamy’s chest, forcing him to take a step back. She blamed her blurry vision on the steam rising from the sink, and didn’t dare lift her right hand out the water. Anya had only  _ just _ finished fixing the roof from the last time that Raven had created fire. “Now get  _ out _ of my house!”

“Raven-”

“I think she told you to leave.” Anya’s voice was loud, and cold enough to cut through Bellamy’s yell. Raven had never been so happy that Octavia had broken her lock years before. 

“Who the fuck are you?!” Bellamy demanded, turning to face the new threat, leaving Raven to sink to the floor on weak legs, the sound of smashing glass and squealing brakes filling her ears, her nose burning with the stench of gin. She could hear yelling through the walls, and then a door slamming. Bright headlights flashed behind her eyes. Her hip burned. Something was burning, like rubber, or maybe a cigarette.

Cold fingers closed over her right hand, and the fire stopped licking at her pants, burning the material. Those same hands gently brushed over her cheeks, clearing some of the blurriness away. Then they pressed Raven’s hands against something warm, with a slow, steady beat running through it. Maybe a speaker. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the flashing headlights turned into golden glowing eyes, and the sound of crashing glass and squealing brakes turned into harsh ragged pants, wet with sobs.

Anya crouched in front of her, dead still, her eyes patient and soft. One of her hands held both of Raven’s against her chest, where her heartbeat created a steady beat against her palms. The other rested lightly against Raven’s thigh, cold against her aching skin. She’d burned a hole through her jeans when her hand had caught fire, and singed her leg. The steam in the air had almost cleared, and it was almost completely dark inside the house, the only light struggling through the cracks in the doorframe from Dandelion. It was blue again.

Barely thinking, Raven pushed herself forwards, her hands tightening into fists in Anya’s shirt, pressing her ear against the strong heartbeat, enveloping herself in the smell of wildflowers, smoke and light sweat to get rid of the stench of gin. Anya fell backwards onto her ass at the unexpected tackle.

“Don’t let me fall.” Raven begged softly, probably pinching Anya though her shirt. Her tears soaked the material in mere moments.

“ _ Nowe _ .” Anya whispered, holding her tightly.

~~~

Raven woke up in bed, without her brace, wearing pajamas. Anya was carding her fingers through Raven’s tangled hair, lying propped on one elbow.

“You showered.” She noticed through a post-crying-and-sleeping husk. Her eyes were dry and itchy.

“I did.” Anya whispered back, tucking strands of Raven’s hair behind her ears.

“You also stole my clothes.” Raven accused weakly, eyeing the pants that ended midway up Anya’s calf.

“How long have you had  _ worsefis _ ?”

“Hmm?”

“ _ Worsefis. _ I do not know the English. War pictures. Sometimes when a  _ gona _ comes home, the war pictures stay in their head.”

“You mean PTSD?”

“I mean what I say. When a warrior’s head is still in the war after the war is over.” Anya’s sentenced were clipped, but her long fingers were still toying with the ends of Raven’s hair, which meant she was frustrated, rather than angry, or offended.

“PTSD means Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Raven explained patiently, shifting slightly further away from ANya to see her face properly. “I don’t have PTSD.”

“Why must you humans label everything?” Anya growled, rolling onto her back, rubbing her right hip, in a way that may have appeared absent, but wasn’t really.

“Anya, I’m not understanding what you’re asking me.”

Anya went still, but Raven didn’t flinch away. Anya didn’t go still as a sign of anger, she went still when she was thinking. It was one of those signs that Raven had overlooked on Bellamy. Not everyone went still to think, and she’d forgotten that. Shit. Apparently having a PhD in Anya’s Body Language when faced with the rest of humanity was about as useful as having a PhD in sculpture at a shooting range.

“You see or hear things that make you think of other things that you have seen or heard in the past. DIdn’t one of your scientists test this? The man with the dog? When he rang the bell, the dog would be fed, yes? But if the man went somewhere, and he heard a bell, he would remember to feed the dog.  _ Worsefis _ happens like this. Sometimes it is something like a drum, which makes a  _ gona _ remember the war, other times it’s seeing blood. But it can be something else too. If a mother loses her child, she can be sad when she sees another child. How long have you had this?” 

“A long time.” Raven mumbled, burrowing further into the sheets. 

Anya would never admit it, but Raven had only spoken of Pavlov once. 

Raven would never admit it, but she knew that she’d only spoken of Pavlov once, and was feeling mildly embarrassed that Anya had remembered that. 

Neither would admit that the analogy was used in a completely unscientific scenario, and was probably some kind of sacrilege. 

“I am sorry. Is there anything I do that makes you feel this?”

“Like a trigger?”

“I don’t understand.” Raven would never say it out loud, but Anya was cute when she was confused.

“If you set a trap, you have a tripwire. If someone hits the tripwire, the trap is  triggered. The kicking of the trip wire triggers the trap. For the mother, the sight of the child triggers the sadness.” Anya pressed three fingers into the skin just above her hip, her shirt lifting slightly. Raven’s brain clicked at the sight of the three silvery scars that snaked up her body.

“Yes, like a trigger.”

“Nothing you do is a trigger to me. Thank you for caring, and can we talk about something else now?”

“One more question.”

Raven groaned and pulled the blankets over her head. She was tired and wanted nothing more than to tell Dandelion to dim down, ask Anya about her scars, and sleep until Ragnarok. Not necessarily in that order. She also knew she was acting like a child but she honestly couldn’t care.

“Who was he?”

“Octavia’s brother. Now can we sleep?”

“It’s ten in the morning Raven.”

“ _ Sleeping _ !”

~~~

“Can’t believe my boss is decreasing my pay.” 

“Raven, you’re self employed.” Anya replied helpfully, tossing Clarke’s favourite hairbrush for Pumpkin, who she’d stolen from Octavia’s yard earlier that day.

“Shut up Anya, I’m feeling miserable.” Raven kicked at the sand is if the cove was to blame for her life problems.

“You hardly go into work anymore, so it’s not hard to understand why you don’t have any money.”

“It’s not my fault that I’m so good at my job that no one’s car is broken!” A particularly well aimed kick sent a shell skittering across the sand, with Pumpkin chasing after it.

“I could always-”

“You are not going to break someone’s car on purpose Anya.”

“Raven-”

“It’s completely immoral and-”

“Raven-”

“It’d feel wrong, y’know? Also-”

“ _ Reivon!  _ You’re about to get bitten!”

“By what?”

Anya dropped into a graceful crouch, spinning her leg through the sand, sending a gritty spray up into the air, and in the sudden mist, Raven felt more than saw Pumpkin knock her over, his big paws firmly planted on her chest. 

By the time the sandy spray had settled again, and Raven had wrestled Pumpkin off herself, ANya had somehow managed to subdue and sit on some kind of two legged scaly feline with the worst teeth that Raven had ever seen. It’s entire body was a rough, sandy colour, and Raven couldn’t be sure if it was just covered in sand, or if it had very good camouflage. A long tail lay on the sand, swishing from side to side in distaste.

Anya didn’t seem very bothered by it’s appearance, judging by the casual way in which she was sitting on it’s car bonnet-sized head, forcing it to keep its jaws closed, and on the ground. How in all hell Anya had managed to create a small dust storm and teleport five meters away, before wrestling the animal to the floor, in the same amount of time that it took Raven to fend off a very licky dog-wolf-alien, she didn’t know.

“What the fuck is that?” She demanded, pushing Pumpkin into a sitting position.

“ _ Sanstelta. _ ”

“Sand Hider?”

“Yes and no.” Anya was almost...smiling as she scratched behind the beast’s ears, and smoothed down the fur around its huge nose. At least Raven assumed it was fur, to be honest, it looked like sand.

“Is it going to eat me?”

“It was.”

“So it won’t any more?”

“Probably not.”

“How come Pumpkin didn’t warn me?”

“He didn’t see it.  _ Sanstelta _ are relative of  _ graun grifin _ , but they live very differently.  _ Sanstelta _ are… invisible, yes? The only reason you see him now is because he’s dirty.”

Raven rolled her eyes. Anya merely stared at her, before making herself more comfortable on the  _ sanstelta _ , which started to purr, sounding like a chainsaw. Raven mumbled something about feeding Anya to the next invisible creature that came through town, and Anya obligingly slid off the animal's head. Raven screamed and darted for cover behind Pumpkin, who thought that this was the best game since the Great Bra Fiasco at Clarke’s barbeque.

~~~

Twenty seven minutes, one gateway passage and a heartfelt goodbye later, Anya was moping down by the water’s edge, and Pumpkin was acting as Raven’s pillow.

“What the actual  _ fuck _ ?!” Octavia’s voice was loud, angry, and piercing as she stomped out of the jungle and onto the beach, “First your psychopath girlfriend punches my brother, and then you steal my dog? What the fuck are you two playing at?”

“Octavia, I-”

“He’s got a black eye, Raven! She doesn’t do anything that you don’t tell her to, so I want to know what the fuck gives! All he did was-”

“All your  _ brother  _ did was insult Raven and cause her to have a panic attack,” Anya glanced at Raven for confirmation, “making her feel unsafe in her own home. All I did was escort him out, and when he attacked me, I defended myself. I see no error in my ways. As for your dog, well, you can have him back if you’d like.” Anya said smoothly, helping Raven to her feet.

“Bell and Raven have been friends for  _ years _ . He would never hurt her!  _ You’re _ the unstable, immoral, raging psychopathical  _ bitch _ who shows up one day and takes everything she wants!”

“Octavia, please stop yelling.” Raven asked, tightening her grip on Anya’s forearm. The air started to smell like gin, as if there was a fog machine over the waves.

“She attacked my brother!” Octavia was practically spitting, sinking into a fighting stance. She was prepped for war. Raven was prepped for sinking into the sand and dissolving into nothing.

“Because he attacked  _ me! _ ”

“ _ Liar! _ ”

“If you’re angry with me, Octavia, you will not take it out on Raven.”

“Shut the fuck up Anya. You’re  _ lying _ Raven! Bellamy would never-”

“Octavia, can you tell me what the word  _ dyke _ means? The word  _ cripple _ ? I am new to this language, I don’t know their meaning, but they were the words your brother was using. I am new to this language, but I know what  _ leave _ and  _ get out _ mean. I also know what  _ useless  _ and  _ no one else wants you _ mean.” Anya’s fingers wrapped around Raven’s hand, her thumb pressing into Raven’s palm.

“What are you-”

“You are new to my culture, but I’m sure Lincoln has told you that there is no honour in lying. I am new to your culture, so maybe I’m mistaken, but when someone is crying, you do not shout at them, and when someone asks you to leave, you listen.”

“You mean to say-”

“I’m not finished. When I walked in, I saw Raven crying and your brother shouting at her. I heard her ask him to leave, repeatedly, and he did not. When I escorted him out, he called me a  _ dyke bitch _ and tried to hit me. He said I was unnatural, and that I was going to hell for my sins. He then tried to hit me again, so I hit him back. He got in his car and left. This is my truth, and I am not lying,  _ ai swega em klin _ .”

“I don’t understand, Bellamy would never-”

“We slept together.” Raven blurted, causing two pair of eyes (eight if you counted Pumpkin’s) to lock onto her face. She blushed and dragged a toe through the sand. “In college. Five times. Then he went away, and I moved out, and I never thought of it again. Maybe he thought it meant we were together, or something, but it was never like that.”

“You slept with my brother?” Octavia made a face. Well, several actually, anger and disgust featuring often.

“Yes. I was either drunk, or high, or lonely, or all three every time. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you O, but I-”

“That’s disgusting Rae. It’s borderline incest, what the fuck were you thinking?!”

“I wasn’t?”

“Damn straight you weren’t! God, I’m never going to get that image out of my head!”

“You’re not mad?”

“Oh I’m fucking furious. I’m just not sure who I’m angry with. On one side, you slept with my fucking  _ brother _ . On the other side  _ you, _ ” she glared at Anya, “drive me absolutely crazy, and you  _ hit _ my brother _ and _ you stole my  _ dog _ !”

“Does it really count as stealing if you call him and he jumps the fence?” Anya asked in a bored tone, examining the sand caught under her fingernails.

“ _ And _ as for  _ Bellamy _ , well… I know you don’t have those words where you’re from, and I know you’d never hear them from anyone around here, and I know that you’re telling me the truth, which means that he yelled at Raven, used two different kinds of slur against her, on top of sleeping with my best friend and waking me up at three in the morning. So that’s one anger for Raven, actually two, because I’m still pissed about the Friends box set, three for Anya, but I’m making it five to make up for nearly killing me twice, and five for Bellamy.”

“That’s lots of Maths O.”

“I know. So you’re getting a prank sometime in the future,” Octavia pointed at Raven, the wheeled to face Anya, “I’m wishing period cramps on you, Bellamy is getting kicked out, and as for  _ you _ , you disloyal traitorous canine, you’re sleeping outside tonight and a lesson about Stranger Danger!”

“You done?” Raven asked, watching with amusement as Pumpkin wagged his tail at his disapproving owner.

“Yes. Got any cookies at your place?”

“I think so.”

“Excellent, I’m taking those too.”

“Or you could wait five minutes and we can have coffee too.”

“Deal.” Octavia grinned, sticking out her hand.

“Deal.” Raven agreed, shaking it.

Anya gave the dog a sarcastic look, and he smiled happily up at her, before dropping Clarke’s slobbery hairbrush on Octavia’s foot.

~~~

“Again Raven.” Anya demanded, her usually soothing presence only serving to piss Raven off even more, “You must focus.”

“I  _ am _ !” Raven snapped, clicking her fingers together again, and again, before slapping the floor in frustration, “This is so  _ stupid _ !”

“You’re not focusing.” Anya said, stretching her legs out, before crossing them again.

“ _ You _ do this then, if it’s so easy!” Raven grumbled.

Anya obligingly stretched out her left hand and snapped her fingers, sending a shower of golden sparks cascading onto the cement floor. Raven growled in frustration and took a swig of water. They’d been sitting on the floor in Raven’s garage for more than two hours, in lieu of any customers. Anya also recommended somewhere that couldn’t burn down easily. 

It’d been more than two hours, and Raven still could not create a single spark. It’d been more than two hours, and she’d probably never had less faith that her leg wouldn’t just fall right the fuck off when she tried to stand again.

“You just need to focus, Raven.”

“I _am_ focusing! I think _fire_ and I snap my fingers, and _presto_ , there’s nothing! _Nada!_ _No puedo hacerlo, es imposible_!” She raised her hands in anger, either to slap the floor again, or throw the water at Anya, she wasn’t sure.

“You can, and it isn’t.” Anya caught her by the wrists, and brought her hands together.

“Where did you learn Spanish?”

“Off the internet. Then I practiced with Callie. Focus Raven. This is physics. It’s friction. Friction creates heat, which creates sparks. You’re creating friction between your fingers, and replacing the lack of force with your will. When you understand the physics, you can create friction, where there is none.”

“I hate it when you make sense.”

“Good, good-”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Let the-”

“Anya, no.”

Anya made a face suspiciously close to a pout, but Raven would never be stupid enough to point it out, and Anya would never admit to it.


End file.
